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IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


OR, 


A ftlanual 


OF 


CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE, 


FOR 


SCRIPTURE READERS, CITY MISSIONARIES, SUNDAY 
SCHOOL TEACHERS, &c. 


BY THE 


Me 
REV. JOHN CUMMING, D.D. 


MINISTER OF THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL CHURCH, CROWN COURT, 
LITTLE RUSSELL STREET, COVENT GARDEN, 


“Thy word is Truth.”—Joun xvii. 17. 


w—hyyre—_~—ns P*IVV-V 9 ayy erv 


PHILADELPHIA : 
PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 


Stereotyped by 
8. DOUGLAS WYETH, 


No. 7 Pear St., Philadelphia, 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER I. 


Is the Soul immaterial and immortal? - - - - - lJ] 


CHAPTER II. 


Does Creation prove the Existence of God? - - - 39 


CHAPTER III. 


Is a Revelation from God to Man probable and neces- 
GASV Toe cee wie | st mire be re eaten aie PO 


CHAPTER IV. 


Is the Bible genuine and authentic? - - - - - 101 


CHAPTER V. 


Is the Bible inspired? - - - + - - = « = = 121 


CHAPTER VI. 


Is the Bible inspired? - - - - © - - © = - 133 
ili 


iv 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER VII. 


General Characteristics of the Bible - - - = 


CHAPTER VIII. 


Is the Bible contradictory or inconsistent? - - 


CHAPTER IX. 


Is the Bible contradictory or inconsistent? - - 


CHAPTER X. 


Doctrinal Difficulties - - - - « « « « «= 


Texts cavilled at - 


Conclusion - - - 


CHAPTER XI. 


CHAPTER XII. 


173 


185 


223 


261 


301 


315 


PREFACE. 


Tue following pages are not meant for 
learned theologians, who already know all 
they contain, and a great deal more, but for 
Scripture-readers, for City missionaries, Pa- 
rochial and Sunday-school teachers, and 
others, who ought to know something of the 
outlines of Christian evidence. 

Deeper solutions can be given of many of 
the difficulties that are quoted in this work, 
but such solutions would be inconvenient 
alike to teachers and learners, in the circum- 
stances to which I have referred. Simple 
and short explanations are, therefore, far 
preferable: these are more easily remem- 
bered, and most thoroughly understood. In 
the present age, a ready reply, like ready 
money, is most valuable. The Author trusts 
his readers will not suppose he has said all 
that can be said on every point. He has 
given the simplest, shortest, and most intelli- 


vi PREFACE. 


gible outlines of the Christian evidence, rather 
than the most powerful and conclusive. 

Should it enable the teacher of others to 
solve any perplexities with ease, which he 
has heretofore failed to explain with satisfac- 
tion to himself or conviction to the pupil; or 
should it furnish any one with an aditional 
reason for the faith that is in him, or in any 
degree commend and vindicate the word of 
God, the Author will be amply rewarded. 

This the writer is truly convinced of, that 
they that read the Bible oftenest, and most 
attentively, will be most deeply persuaded 
of its Divine origin. A self-evidencing vir- 
tue goes forth from it; and they that thus 
read it feel within them living proofs of its 
divinity, and would rather part with all near 
and dear things than surrender their belief in 
the inspiration of a book which peoples hea- 
ven with their departed relatives—opens to 
them springs of real consolation upon earth 
—and lifts the veil that conceals from their 
eyes yet brighter and more glorious prospects 
in eternity. The Saviour said, “Thy word 
is truth ;’? and innumerable hearts from their 
inmost depths answer, “ It is.” 

There are many thousands who have never 
examined, and therefore are not convinced 


PREFACE, Vii 


by the evidences of Christianity. Perfect 
masters in law, or in medicine, or in litera- 
ture, or in science, they are utterly unin- 
formed on that “one thing needful,”’ in com- 
parison of which ail these things are as straws 
floating on the surface of the current of life. 

The most irrational persons upon earth are 
surely those who will not investigate the 
claims of a religion which, right or wrong, 
declares itself to be the only communication 
of the mind of God. Either the Bible is di- 
vine, and justly demands supremacy in all 
religious discussions, or it is a gross impos- 
ture: any thing between it cannot be. The 
most inexcusable and unjustifiable course 
that any can pursue, is that of indifference or 
ignorant contempt. 

Scripture proclaims such to be fools, and 
those only who read and understand to be 
wise. The prodigal was not “come to him- 
self,’ or, as we say, was beside himself, till 
he was restored to his home. The insanity 
of our asylums is that of the intellect. The 
insanity of thoughtless millions is that of the 
heart. There is a parallelism between the 
two states. Let us look at it. A very com- 
mon mark of insanity is insensibility to con- 
clusive evidence. No weight of reasoning 


Vill PREFACE, 


will sway the insane. But is not the unbe- 
liever dead to the claims of truth, that are 
bright with the signature of God, and re- 
splendent with the glories of heaven? Does 
not all creation, from the lowly violet in the 
sequestered vale, to the vast orb in the firma- 
ment, proclaim as one great choir, “the hand 
that made us is Divine ?”’ and is not insensi- 
bility to this, insanity? It is thus, then, that 
the unbelieving spectator of creation, as well 
as “the undevout astronomer, is mad.?’? Does 
not Revelation give still more cogent proofs 
of its authorship? Are not His foot-prints in 
its every page? Is it not the record of Hig 
ways? Is it not written in deeds of power, 
and acts of beneficence and mercy? Has it 
not survived all opposition, defied all pro- 
Scription? Do not martyrs from their flame- 
shrouds, and saints from their beds of glory, 
declare, “Thy word is Truth?” Is not all 
confusion without it? Yet the sceptic rejects 
all, and would extinguish all. Surely his is 
the insanity of the seaman who would cast 
away his chart and compass in the storm, or 
the raving, as it is the impotence, of him who 
would blot out the sun, and moon, and stars, 
‘rom the dome of earth. 

Indifference to momentous interests, visibly 


PREFACE. 1X 


in peri, is strong evidence of insanity. Were 
we to see a man perfectly indifferent in the 
midst of the blazing rafters of his house, we 
could not help concluding that the man was 
deranged. Does he manifest greater sanity 
who hears of a nearing hell and a departing 
heaven, and yet remains in absolute apathy ? 
Is it other than a maniac’s folly to be vexed 
about toys, and to be careless of everlasting 
realities? Shakspeare describes king Lear 
as gathering straws with the hand which had 
wielded a mighty sceptre; and a greater than 
Shakspeare describes the king of Babylon as 
herding with the beasts of the field, in order 
that they may thus give vivid pictures of hu- 
manity in its ruins. Have not these dis- 
crowned kings a thousand living antitypes? 
What Divine faculties do we see burrowing 
in the earth! What mighty energies ex- 
pending their strength in follies, indifferent 
to eternal realities! What attention devoted 
to fables, and denied to awful facts! How 
many losing a soul for eternity, in settling a 
date in time! 

A man standing by the crater of the groan- 
ing and heaving voleano—a woman holding 
her babe, and laughing with maniac revelry 
amid the converging flames of her furniture 


x PREFACE. 


and spurning away the fire-escape—the sea 
man catching fish, while his vessel sinks inch 
by inch in the abyss of waters—are but faint 
representations of the insanity of him who, 
unconcerned about his soul, engages in all 
pursuits and indulges in all pleasures, with 
an eternity of responsibility rolling onward 
on the spot on which he stands, like a vast 
Atlantic sea. And since insanity ends in 
suicide, what else is deliberate rejection of 
life? ‘The unbelieving perish by their own 
hands. Theirs, too, is insanity without its 
irresponsibility. They show the folly of the 
maniac, while they incur the guilt of the 
criminal. : 

Reader, review your state: consider your 
ways: ponder the paths of your feet. Fully, 
and fairly, and patiently weigh the facts, and 
reasonings, and illustrations contained in the 
following pages, and God himself direct you 
toa just, a true, and unchangeable conviction. 


IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


CHAPTER I. 


IS THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL ? 


Tuts is a useful though not an essential pre- 
liminary investigation. We therefore attempt 
to throw a little light on it. Christianity is 
the religion of inquiry, as well as the subject 
of triumphant proof. It does not demand 
our assent to propositions without any pre- 
vious examination of their character and their 
claims. Its language is—Search, examine, 
judge ye, whether these things be so or not. 
Our first is simply a preliminary inquiry— 
it is the immortality, or after-existence, of the 
soul of man. If there be no hereafter—no 
reckoning at the judgment-morn—no destiny 
in the future, dependent upon character cre- 
ated in the present—then the claims of the 
Gospel to be a revelation from God are of 
comparatively trivial moment. If, when we 


die, and the green turf is laid upon us, our 
Ul 


12 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


eyes are destined to open on no hereafter. 
nor our hearts to throb again, then the truth 
or the falsity of Christianity, except so far as 
it touches this, is an insignificant inquiry. 

The materiality or immateriality of the 
soul does not vitally affect the question of its 
hereafter existence. J am convinced, and I 
think I shall be able to convince the reader, 
that the soul is immaterial; but if it were 
shown satisfactorily by physiologists that the 
soul of man is a material substance, that 
would not prove that the soul is not immor- 
tal. God might be pleased to endue matter 
with the attributes of immortality. He might 
be pleased to impress upon a material soul 
the capacity for a never ending or eternal 
hereafter. His fiat would be its inheritance 
of a never-ending existence. But I think I 
shall, be able to prove, by a few plain and 
simple propositions, that the soul is not only 
tmmortal, but that it is also zmmaterial— 
that is, that it is not the same in substance as 
the body. 

The favourite position of materialists, that 
is, those who deny its immateriality, is an 
analogy. They say that the mind grows and 
dies with the body—that the mind is infun- 
tile with the infant body,—full grown in the 


THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL. 13 


adult, —wasted by disease, debilitated by 
age; and therefore, say they, it must be, as 
the natural sequence, annihilated by death. 
They maintain, that the analogy that subsists 
between the body and the soul, or the inti- 
macy between the one and the other, is so 
entire, that we find at each step the mind 
and body going hand in hand in a common 
equi-progressive destiny, so that (I repeat the 
words,) the mind is infantile with the infant 
body, full grown in the adult, wasted by dis- 
ease, debilitated by age ; and therefore, they 
say, the presumption is, that it dies when the 
body dies. 

Now, if they could substantiate the first 
four propositions, that the mind is always in- 
fantile in the infant, and always full grown 
in the adult, and always wasted by disease, 
and always debilitated by age, then the pre- 
sumption would be that most probably it 
was always destroyed by death. But we 
can prove from facts, that the analogy does 
not hold good at every step; and one such 
proof is fatal to the whole. We find that 
the soul is not always wasted by disease. I 
myself have seen the soul possessed of mas- 
culine vigour, when the whole earthly tene- 
~ ment was on the verge of crumbling into 
2 


14 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 


ruins. It is not true, also, that the soul is 
always debilitated by age. I have seen grey 
hairs and gathering infirmities of body en- 
casing and yet unfolding a soul vigorous as 
in the meridian of life. Now if the analogy 
fail in one step, then the consequence de- 
duced must fail also; for if it be true that the 
soul is only sometimes weakened by disease, 
and sometimes debilitated by age, then the 
only logical result they can reach by their 
argument is, that it is sometimes mortal and 
sometimes immortal, and therefore that there 
are two sorts of men, one class mortal and 
another immortal; which is what has been 
called by logicians a reductio ad absurdum. 
We therefore maintain, that this analogy, 
which some materialists glory in as a demon- 
stration that the soul perishes with the body, 
does not hold good when we come fairly and 
impartially to investigate it. 

Mind and body do not always sympathize 
together; that is, the one may be a sufferer, 
and the other not. 

It has been found that paralysis has un- 
nerved and unstrung the whole system, and 
yet the mind of man has remained unscathed. 
I will quote a case; that of the celebrated, 
the witty, and the clever diplomatist, Talley- 


THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL, 15 


rand. His body was in the most wretched, 
miserable, diseased and distressed condition 
one can conceive; and yet the subtlety, and 
the wisdom, and the skill, and the talent, 
and the penetration of that diplomatist are 
allowed to have remained to his last moments 
unequalled. I may also refer to the cele- 
brated Dean Swift. It was said, that before 
he died his body was a moving tomb; and 
yet his mind was as vigorous as in his earlier 
years. It is stated, in the forty-third number 
of the Quanterly Review, that Morgagni and 
‘\, Haller, distinguished continental. anatomists, 
have ascertained that in one instance or an- 
other every part of the brain has been found 
destroyed or disorganized, and yet the indi- 
viduals have none of them been deprived of 
mind, or affected in what has been thought the 
corresponding intellectual powers. I do not 
say, that in any one case the whole of the 
brain has been found disorganized or de- 
stroyed, but in one instance or another they 
have found it so with each part successively, 
and yet none of those individuals had lost 
any of their moral, intellectual, or mental 
powers. And if it can thus be shown, that this 
very organ, the brain, in which some crani- 
ologists are pleased to lodge the mental facul- 


16 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


ties of man, has been more or less destroyed 
without any of his affections or intellectual 
energies being injured, it is proof positive 
that something more than the mere brain is 
that which constitutes his claim to be a men- 
taland amoral being. But when anatomists 
have analysed the brain, what have they 
found? Let us hear. Some have said, that 
they trace all mental phenomena to a portion 
called the pingal gland. Now anatomists and 
chemists have analysed it; and what do you 
think is it made of? Phosphate of lime. And 
will phosphate of lime originate the splendid 
dramas of Shakspeare, or the epic poems of 
Milton, or the Iliad of Homer, or the poems 
of Virgil? Monstrous absurdity! It is quite 
plain, that there-must be some agent prior 
and extraneous to the brain, which acts upon 
the brain, and thereby upon the physical sys- 
tem of man. 

I stated, at the outset of my remarks, that 
the physiologist asserts that the mind is in- 
fantile with the body in the child, vigorous 
in the adult, weakened by disease, debilitated 
by age, and therefore destroyed by death. 
Now I would just invert this. 

I would say that the Jody is infantile, not 
the mind in the child. Have you not ob 


THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL. 17 


served (what is a remarkable practical lesson) 
that the child has thoughts and fears and feel- 
ings which it is not able to express by its 
bodily organs? Hence the remark made by 
parents, that the child knows much more than 
you suppose ; and when we look at the atten- 
tion, the listening looks, and the rivetted notice 
that a child gives to what is going on, we are 
convinced that he knows a great deal more 
than he generally gets credit for. Hence it 
may be seen that children grow up with im- 
pressions upon their minds that we cannot ac- 
count for. The fact is, that at the time their 
infant bodies gave no intimation of what was 
going on in the inner sanctuary of the soul, 
their maturer minds were drinking in the 
habits and principles of those around them. 
I maintain, therefore, that in the child the 
mind is greater than the body—not that the 
body is equal to or greater than the mind, 
And I would therefore reverse the position 
materialists glory in, and say that the body 
of the child is infantile, while its mind is pos- 
sessed of attributes far greater than is usually 
thought. 

We admit a close intimacy between mind. 
and matter, between the soul and the body, 


18 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


‘but we deny identity. And I think I can 
prove this. 

We shall find, for instance, that if we take 
so much of opium or so much of alcohol into 
the body, the mind, from its intimacy with 
the body, will be affected by it; that is, by 
sympathy. We shall find also, that if we 
take into the mind so much anger, so much 
jealousy, so much hatred, so much love, so 
much passion, the body will, from its inti- 
macy with the mind, be affected by it; and 
this proves intimacy. But if the material 
stimuli of opium or alcohol require a mate- 
rial medium through which to act, surely 
the moral stimuli of jealousy and love and 
passion must, by parity of reasoning, require 
a moral medium, the soul, through which 
they can act upon the body. I do think that 
this ‘position is positively irrefragable—viz. 
that the fact that physical stimuli require a 
physical agent through which to act upon 
the mind, warrants us in concluding that 
moral stimuli requird a moral agent through 
which to act upon the body, and therefore 
that there must be a part that is zzmaterial, 
moral, and intellectual. 

We do not deny, that if the brain become 
greatly diseased, mania or madness has fre- 


THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL. 19 


quently ensued; but this does not prove that 
the brain is the soul. Suppose I single out 
the best musician that ever touched an in- 
strument, and take him to a piano, or an 
organ, or a violin, or any other instrument 
of music, out of tune, and bid him play. He 
tries to produce the notes he knows, but 
neither melody nor harmony is poured forth. 
Why? Not because the musician’s mind 
has lost its power, or the musician’s fingers 
have lost their skill; but because the instru- 
ment on which he acts is out of tune. Now 
it is just so with the brain. When a man is 
seized with mania or madness, it is not be- 
cause the soul has become disorganized or 
destroyed, but because the instrument is out 
of tune and disarranged. In fact, the soul is 
the master musician; and the brain is but 
the instrument, through which that master 
musician acts—in tones, in looks, in sympa- 
thies, and by the senses—upon the world 
that is around. 

In the next place, it is said by physiolo- 
gists—If there be a soul, we ought to be able 
to detect and show it to all who choose to 
look on it. 

Now this seems to me a most extraordi- 
nary conclusion. The very definition that 


20 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


we give of the soul (that it is immaterial) 
would be sufficient reason why we should 
not be able to detect it. The physiologist is 
so accustomed to material anatomy, that he 
always imagines that a thing does not exist, 
unless he can show it on the point of his 
lancet. But if this be his only criterion of 
existence, he must be very sceptical in many 
things. Can he show an idea upon the point 
of his lancet? Can he show a thought on 
the point of his scalpel? It can therefore be 
no good reason for denying the existence of 
the soul, that he cannot mechanically detect 
it. | 

But we allege that we have clearer evi- 
dence of the existence of mind, than we 
have of the existence of matter. This may 
Seem strange; but it is true. Berkeley, the 
bishop of Cloyne, a distinguished and excel- 
lent man, maintained that there was no such 
thing as matter—that there are merely cer- 
tain sensations or impressions made by God 
upon the brain, which give us the notion of 
matter—and that we live in a world, not of 
matter, but of universal idealism. Absurd 
as it may appear, one must be surprised at 
the ingenious arguments with which he con- 
tends for the non-existence of matter. But 


THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL, 21 


though he could reason away matter, he 
could not thus reason himself out of the ex- 
istence of mind. For the very fact that a 
man doubts and reasons, is a proof that 
there is a doubting and reasoning faculty. 
The very doubt establishes our position, that 
there is a mind, or a soul, or an immaterial 
faculty, capable of doubting. 

Physiologists or materialists (not all physi- 
ologists, but those of them who are material- 
ists) say that the brain is the mind—that it 
alone is the soul—and that in fact they can 
trace every thing to the brain as the ultima- 
tum of sensation and thought, but no fur- 
ther. 

Now I admit the fact, that we can trace 
Sensation and thought to the brain; but I 
will show you that we can goa step further 
and trace it beyond it. For instance; we 
are in the habit of saying that the eye Sees ; 
but ¢he eye cannot see; it is the mere istru- 
ment of vision, it is no more to man than a 
telescope or a microscope beautifully con- 
structed, and if the eye is diseased, then 
sight is destroyed. I take a step further ; 
Tallege that if the optic nerve is diseased, 
then though the eye may be as perfect as 
God ever created it, yet ™ cannot see. I go 


22 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


still a step further; it has been found, that if 
the brain be diseased or pressed upon ina 
certain part, then though the optic nerve and 
the eye remain sound, there is no sight. 
But now I will go a step further. A letter 
or newspaper is brought by the postman to 
an individual; he reads it, and the result of 
reading it has been that the man has dropped 
down dead. Why this? No physical wea- 
pon touched him. It was a purely mental 
idea, that acted upon the brain, and the 
brain acted upon the nervous system, 
and the man died because the letter con- 
tained some fearful or disastrous tidings, Or 
again, one friend calls: upon another, and 
says that some great catastrophe has hap- 
pened to his nearest and dearest relative, 
and we find that instances have occurred of 
the man instantly losing his sight, or his 
hearing, or being paralysed. Here it was a 
moral fact, that struck the man with physical 
effects. The mind or mental power acted 
on the brain; that acted on the nerves; and 
they acted on the senses. And thus while 
the materialist traces all to the brain, we 
show that we can go a step further—and 
prove the existence of a being above the 
brain, an agent that acts upon the brain, 


THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL. 23 


and, in short, that the brain is the mere 
agent of that being that dwells in the imma- 
terial sanctuary, inviolate within. 
Materialists have admitted (indeed all 
must admit) that the body of man undergoes 
a complete change, some say every seven, 
Some every twelve, some every twenty 
years, Suppose now, to avoid anything 
like controversy, we say every twenty years 
—that every particle in man’s physical sys- 
tem is transferred and removed from him 
every twenty years. Then if a man live to 
the age of sixty, it can be demonstrated that 
he has had actually three bodies in the 
course of those sixty years. Every particle 
in his body has been changed, and supplant- 
ed by another particle. This is admitted. 
Now if the mind of man is material, and be 
the body, and of the body, then it must 
have undergone corresponding changes; and 
therefore in every twenty years a man’s con- 
sciousness must have changed, and he must 
have no recollection, or personal identity, no 
conviction that at sixty years of age he is 
the same person that he was forty years 
ago. Now what an absurdity is this! We 
know that the body has undergone this 
transmutation of parts; but we have a feel- 


24 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


ing and consciousness of personal identity, 
by which we are thoroughly convinced that 
we are each the same person, that we have 
each the same peculiarity of temper, of dis- 
position, of feeling, of love, of hatred, of hap- 
piness, that we are the same in all substantial 
respects as we were twenty years ago. And 
therefore we maintain, that as the materialist 
cannot show that man’s mind changes every 
twenty years, he cannot show that it is (as he 
alleges) material. 

It is admitted by materialists, that matter 
is infinitely divisible, or at least that it is 
divisible into parts. Thus you speak of a 
foot of deal, or an inch.of oak, or a yard of 
rope, or of cable, or of chain. Now if man’s 
mind be material, the same as the body, as 
the materialist alleges, then it ought to be 
perfectly good sense and good grammar to 
speak of an inch of anger, of a foot of 
jealousy, or of yards of passion; the very 
statement of which so revolts all men’s feel- 
ings, and seems so ridiculous, that it needs 
only to be mentioned, to provoke the refuta- 
tion it deserves. 

Materialists have said that we find this 
fact illustrating their proposition—that the 
mind seems to repose, and sleep, and enjoy 


THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL, 25 


quiescence along with the body. They quote 
the case of individuals sleeping at night. 
“ We see,”’ they say, “that the mind is weary 
and worn out with the brain, and that it 
courts and enjoys repose along with the body ; 
and therefore it is part and parcel of the 
material frame.”’ 

Now I rather question the ground of this 
position. At all events one fact to the con- 
trary would shake their argument that it is 
always so. There is no individual in the 
world, who has not been conscious of dream- 
ing. That one fact shows, that the body 
may be in a state of repose, while the mind 
is in the exercise of unshackled activity. 
And I am conscious that the mind is fre- 
quently in a state of more active and vigor- 
ous exercise during sleep, than it was in 
waking hours. I believe that the mind never 
sleeps, and that at every moment every indi- 
vidual’s mind is active. 

But the physiologist says, If the mind 
never sleeps, why then do we not recollect in 
the morning what we dreamed in the night ? 
Now I ask, do you recollect, when you sit 
down at night, all the thoughts that passed 
through your mind in the day-time? Youdo 


not. You know that ten thousand thoughts 
3 


26 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD: 


have passed through your mind this day, 
which you cannot recollect and enumerate 
this night. And may it not be—(nay, is it not 
so?)—that ten thousand thoughts, brighter 
and better than of earth, pass through your 
mind in the hours of sleep, which you can- 
not recollect in the morning? I am con- 
scious that I have preached far better ser- 
mons in sleep than ever I did in the pulpit; 
and I have composed far better commen- 
taries upon God’s word, and have been 
conscious of it too, in my sleep, than when 
sitting in my study. And I believe many an 
individual has been conscious in sleep of bril- 
liant thoughts, that would make his name 
memorable as Milton’s if he could only em- 
body and give utterance to them in his wak- 
ing hours. This statement therefore that the 
mind is invariably in a state of quiescence 
and repose along with the body, is not borne 
out by the general experience of mankind. 
Let it be recollected that every thing which 
the materialist or the physiologist has de- 
tected in man, has been the subject of analy- 
sis. Ihave said that one portion of man’s 
brain has been analysed: but so has every 
part. ‘The nerves in man’s system, the brain 
in his head, have been subjected to the an- 


THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL, 27 


alysis of the chemists; and they can tell you 
of what they all are composed. ‘To explain 
mind, it has been suggested, that galvanism 
or electricity is the source of the nervous in- 
fluence of the human system. Now if we 
can thus find out all the component parts of 
the human system, and ascertain the secrets 
of nervous sensibility, then the question is, 
are any of those parts, or is any collocation 
or excitement of them, adequate to produce 
thoughts? Would all the galvanism or elec- 
tricity in the world produce a single book of 
the Aneid of Virgil, or a single page of the 
Paradise Lost of Milton? If mere galvanic 
influence is the source of thought, then it 
would follow, that if you could impart to a 
brute animal a greater quantity of galvanic 
power, you would raise him nearer to the 
dignity of a man; and if you could impart 
to the greatest fool or the veriest idiot, a 
greater quantity of electricity, you would 
raise him and might bring him to the height 
of a Homer ora “Milton. But this is felt to 
be absurd. And can we then suppose, that 
a quantity of matter acted on by this gal- 
vanic influence, is all that is meant by mind— 
that that can regulate and produce the splen- 
did discoveries of the age—that can construct 


28 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


a ship of war, a steam vessel, a railroad, or 
any of those discoveries that stamp this as an 
age of great and unparalleled progress in 
human knowledge, and in physical science? 
No, the very statement of the thing is enough 
to demonstrate its absurdity and untenable- 
ness. 

It has been held by some materialists, that 
the race is perpetual, but that the individuals 
of the race are perishable ; that is, that while 
the human race is perpetual, and having 
begun in time, generation shall be perpetu- 
ated after generation ad w&ternum, the indi- 
viduals who make up the generations, or the 
component parts, are all perishable, and dis- 
appear. They quote, as instances and illus- 
trations, the beasts of the field, and the trees 
of the forest. Take a tree, they say, the 
apple tree for instance; it grows up from 
a little seed, it bears its leaves and blossoms, 
and its fruit, and then it dies, and afterwards 
other apple trees come up, and so each apple 
tree perishes, but the genus or species of 
apple trees is perpetual through all centuries. 

Now, if there were a perfect parallel be- 
tween the ¢ree and z¢s uses and z¢s destiny, 
and man and his uses and Ais destiny, this 
position would be tenable. But if we look 


THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL. 29 


closer at the subject, we shall find there is no 
parallel. In the first place, when the apple 
tree has produced its blossoms, and borne its 
fruit, and spread forth its boughs, it has done 
all it was meant to accomplish, and then it 
dies and disappears. But when man has 
made his noblest steps in knowledge, in tri- 
umph over sin, in victory over temptation, 
instead of having achieved his end, he has 
only risen one step higher, in order to pre- 
pare him for rising to another—and when he 
has reached that, for rising to another still. 
In short, eternity, boundlessness and progres- 
Sion are the elements of man; while time 
and the material world are the elements of 
the tree. Until man is perfect as God is per- 
fect, acquainted with science, and wisdom, 
and experience, even as God is, he has not 
attained to the ultimatum of his power, and 
the end of his being: and therefore the par- 
allel does not hold good. Nor does it hold 
good in another respect. For if the tree 
were allowed infinite and boundless pro- 
gress, it would rise so high, and spread its 
branches so wide, that it would overshadow 
too much of the world,—it would absorb all 
the nutritious juices of the earth, and there 


would be no space nor room for the growth 
3 * 


30 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


and expansion of other trees quite as useful 
and necessary to man ; and therefore its end- 
less expansion and growth would be most 
mischievous. But we find the reverse true 
of man’s soul. The more he discovers, the 
larger sphere he opens up for other discov- 
eries to follow ; the more he masters in know- 
ledge, in science, in virtue, in piety, in right- 
eousness, instead of taking up the ground that 
ought to be occupied by others, he strikes out 
new spheres for others to occupy—new paths 
for others to walk in—new room for the ex- 
pansion of the intellectual and moral power of 
those around him. So that while the tree, by 
endless progression, would absolutely encum- 
ber the system to which it belongs, man, by 
endless progression, instead of overshadowing 
and excluding, rather creates greater room 
for others, and furnishes fresh scope for the 
development of their intellectual powers and 
moral grandeur; so that in this respect also 
the comparison does not hold good between 
man and the tree. It fails too in another 
respect. With the brute of the field, the pre- 
sent is every thing. If we take a dog, for 
instance; he has no recollection—at least no 
recollection of any of the facts, the transac- 
tions, the principles, the doings, or the great 


THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL. 31 


sensations of the past; nor has he any 
anticipation of the future whatever. The 
present is every thing with the dumb ani- 
mals. But with man memory is the treasury 
and the storehouse of ten thousand things 
that are past; and he has within him a 
power of anticipation, that still strives and 
stretches onward and away to things that are 
future. While the present makes up the en- 
tire happiness of the dog, the mast and the 
Juture are the great sources and fountains 
of the happiness of man. Therefore the 
destruction of the dog is no loss to him. The 
present is all; and when he is extinguished he 
loses nothing. But if man be annihilated, he 
loses all the past treasures he has accumula- 
ted, and he forgoes all the bright joys he anti- 
cipates for the future. The annihilation of his 
soul is a catastrophe too big for human imagi- 
nation to conceive, too horrible for the human 
mind to look to. When the apple tree has 
withered, and all its branches and its boughs 
have been dissolved, they do not perish; the 
constituent parts of it, when reduced to pow- 
der, are fertile nutriment to the earth, and are 
absorbed into it, and are reproduced in other 
shapes. It may appear in the share of an- 
other apple-tree; it dies, it is cut down, and 


32 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


is resolved into dust; and in the next century 
it may appear in the form of the blooming 
rose, or in the shape of the fragrant violet. 
It is not annihilated ; it merely experiences 
a change of form and of development, a 
transmigration of substance. But this will 
not hold good of man. If man’s soul should 
be thus reduced, it cannot become thus re- 
vived. Why? Because my consciousness 
never can be another man’s; my feelings, 
my hopes, my prospects, my personal iden- 
tity, never can be another man’s, I can give 
away my money; I can give my knowledge; 
I can give my very limbs, my life ; but I can- 
not give away that consciousness of personal 
identity, which constitutes me. It is inalien- 
able from me; it must either be extinguished 
altogether, or perpetuated in myself. So 
that whilst the destruction of the tree is only 
the preparation of that tree for other forms 
of existence, and perhaps more beauteous 
forms, the destruction of my soul must by 
the necessity of the case be utter annihila- 
tion. It never can be transmigration, or 
transfer to any other. We say, therefore, that 
the supposed analogy between the rational 
and the animal or vegetable creation, in this, 
that the race is perpetual, but that the indi- 


THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL. 33 


viduals of the race perish, is a position that 
cannot be held. 

But I appeal for evidence to men’s inner- 
most feelings. I have given many plain and 
intelligible statements; but there are proofs 
superior to the reasoning and the subtlety of 
human logic. Reader, go to the grave of 
a departed father or a friend. It will there 
be seen, that man’s feelings and common 
sense are mightier and more overwhelming 
than any logic; and when you look on the 
grave of the near and the dear, is there not 
something that tells you that you are not 
parted for ever? Is there not a wish spring- 
ing up in your heart from mysterious depths, 
that impresses on you the thought that you 
shall meet again? Who implanted that 
wish? Why are we capable of it? When 
the dog sees a dog buried, he has no such 
feeling; when the ox sees an ox slain, he has 
no such expectancy. Why is it that man, 
when he looks upon the pale face of departed 
relationship, has a wish—and not only a 
wish, an impression—nay, more, a conviction 
that cannot be erased—that they shall meet 
again? Has God implanted this lingering 
longing after immortality, but implanted this 
wish, and made us capable of this feeling 


84 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


only to tantalize and to taunt us? Impossi- 
ble! This would be worse than the treat- 
ment of the fabled Tantalus, of whom it is 
alleged in mythology, that when the cup of 
cooling water was placed near his lips, the 
moment he tried to drink it, it departed, 
aggravating his torment year after year. If 
God has made us with this strong wish, this 
yearning after immortality, only to tantalize 
us, and to snatch from us the cup of life at 
the moment we are about to drink of it, 
surely that God cannot be the good, the kind, 
the loving God, that even nature and nature’s 
voice proclaim Him to be. 

When man has overcome, and possessed, 
and appropriated all that is in the universe, 
there is yet something in man that will not 
allow him to be satisfied. His soul’s vast 
appetences are not met. It yearns for satis- 
faction still. 

I think Alexander the Great presents, in 
one instance of his life, a most impressive 
proof of the greatness, if not the immor- 
tality of the soul. You are aware, that that 
monarch overran the whole earth, and sub- 
dued every nation; and at the conclusion of 
universal victory, what did he say? “ Now 
that I have gained the whole world, that 


THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL, 35 


object of ten thousand individuals, that wish 
of ten thousand hearts, I am satisfied ?”” No, 
Alexander the Great had something more in 
him, though he knew it not; he sat down, 
that monarch, that mighty conqueror—and 
wept like a child, because he had not another 
world to conquer! ‘The world could not fill 
his mind, nor would it fill a babe’s. We 
read also of a Roman emperor, who had run 
the round of all the pleasures of the world, 
offering a rich reward to any one who should 
discover a new pleasure; as if to teach us, 
that when all the sweets of the world have 
been tasted, and all the contents of the world 
have been subdued and possessed, man’s 
soul, unsatisfied with its material posses- 
sions, thirsts and longs for something nobler 
brighter, greater, and better, than the world 
itself. 

Again, if there be no hereafter, how are we 
to account for those thoughts, vaster than the 
earth, that spring up in every one’s mind, and 
of which every one is more or less conscious? 

Is it not true, that thoughts, more glorious 
than any thing that the world can furnish, do 
occasionally leap from our hearts, like angels 
too bright and too beautiful for earth? Is it 
not true, that we just catch from astronomy, 


36 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


what is sufficient to excite our curiosity, to 
know more of its brilliant and ever burning 
orbs, and the more we know, the more still 
we strive and thirst to know? Isit not true, 
that we form at times conceptions of human 
excellence, ideas of loveliness and moral 
worth, that never have been, and never can 
be realized on earth? What are all these? 
They are presentiments of heaven—harbin- 
gers of immortality—voices, crying even “in 
the wilderness”? of the materialist’s heart, 
that man is not to perish with the brute. 
They proclaim, in tones too distinct to be 
misunderstood, that there will come a time, 
when all those stars which he has imper- 
fectly seen shall be stretched out before him, 
like isles upon the ocean of infinitude—when 
all those ideas of excellence—those thirstings 
after perfection—those aspirations after joy 
and peace, shall be satisfied from the river of 
God, which flows from the throne of God, 
and of the Lamb for ever and ever. 
Progression is the order of all that we see 
in the world; and this furnishes a presump- 
tion of our immortality. 
A striving after something that is above it, 
is the order and the characteristic of every 
created thing. ‘Take the lowest form of this; 


THE SOUL IMMATERIAL AND IMMORTAL. 37 


take the metal in its ore. Look at those 
crystals, that appear upon the copper or the 
silver ore; they are just the striving of that 
substance, to reach the next grade of excel- 
lence, the vegetable product. If we turn to 
the flower, the tree, and the fruit, as for in- 
Stance the sensitive plant, we find vegetable 
presenting the foreshadow and striving after 
animal life. And if we go to animal life, we 
find some creatures treading upon the very 
heels of man, and striving to reach his dig- 
nity and glory. And when we come to man, 
is all this to be arrested? Is he to be an ex- 
ception and an anomaly in the noblest analo- 
gies of the universe? Is he to bea petri- 
faction? We know that it is not‘so. We 
know and feel, that from being mortal here, 
he shall be immortal hereafter—his body 
only dissolved in the dust, or laid in the silent 
grave. He shall see another day, a day (to 
leave the paths of human reasoning, and 
have recourse to the inspiration of God,) 
“when they that are in the graves shall hear 
the voice of the Son of God, and shall come 
forth, they that have done good unto the 
resurrection of life, and they that have done 
evil unto the resurrection of damnation.” 

I have given you all the reasons I could 

4 


88 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


collect. They are not wholly original; they 
are gathered in the course of reading. ‘They 
are facts and reasons which I submit to you; 
and I conceive that, when we lay them to- 
gether, and weigh and consider them, they 
amount to a moral presumption the most 
overwhelming, that man’s soul shall live 
hereafter—that when God “ breathed into his 
nostrils the breath of life,” He gave him an 
immortal soul. 

If we appeal to Revelation, the matter is 
soon ended. There the intimations are plain. 
But all that Ihave shown you is, how far 
nature will go. And I trust I shall be able 
to show, that we can prove from nature also, 
that there is a God; and by and by, that the 
Bible is a book sent from that God—the 
intimations of which are the intimations of 
truth. 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 39 


CHAPTER II. 


DOES CREATION PROVE THE EXISTENCE OF Gop! 


Does creation evidence a God? It does; but 
on this subject I must make a preliminary 
distinction. It is this; an atheist there may 
be, but an anti-theist there cannot possibly 
be. That is to say, a man may declare that 
he does not find any evidence that satisfies 
him of the existence of a God, but no man 
may dare to say absolutely, there is not a 
God. The former, is merely the expression 
of that individual’s necessarily most limited, 
imperfect, and restricted experience : but the 
latter proposition would imply, that the indi- 
vidual had soared among the stars, and ran- 
sacked the contents of the worlds that are 
there—that he had descended to the caves of 
the ocean, and explored the unknown trea- 
sures and stores that are there—that he had 
travelled through the mines and strata of the 
earth, and explored the hidden recesses, and 
depths, and mysteries there—that, in short, 
he had been in time past possessed of omni- 
presence and of omniscience, and in the ex- 


& 


40 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


ercise of two attributes of Deity, had not 
discovered a God. The fact is, such an indi- 
vidual must be himself God, in order to be 
in a position to announce the proposition— 
There is not a God. 

This distinction is most important. All 
which the atheist can say is, “I do not find 
proofs of a God ;”” and this depends upon the 
sagacity of his mind—upon the extent of his 
survey—upon the honesty of his researches, 
and the continuity of his application, and is 
at the best a very venturous and precarious 
announcement. But no man can declare, 
“¢ There is not a God ;’? because such a decla- 
ration would imply that the individual mak- 
ing it is omniscient, for if there be one star 
that studs the firmament unexplored by him, 
that star may be the lesson-book that pro- 
claims the existence of a God; and if there 
be one corner in the boundlessness of infini- 
tude, unexamined, it may disclose a God; 
and therefore, until the individual has swept 
the illimitable recesses of space, he cannot 
sit down and declare there is not a God. 

I may also observe that the atheist is not 
to be blamed because he has not found out 
the existence of God ; but he is to be blamed 
if, having powers fitted to investigate—if, 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 41 


having facts submitted for collocation—if, 
having evidence pressed upon his judgment, 
and his conscience—he refuses to examine, 
and concludes in wilful and obstinate ignor- 
ance that he cannot find a God. And the 
charge that will be adduced against such a 
man at the judgment bar will not be that he 
was ignorant of God, but that he would not 
give himself the trouble to examine whether 
there was a God or not. 

In the next place, the very fact that the 
existence of a God is probable, or even pos- 
sible, ought to awaken in every reflecting 
being the most strenuous and the most perse- 
vering efforts to know if there be that God. 
Shall I every hour be the recipient of innu- 
merable mercies—shall I every day enjoy 
blessings countless as the sands upon the sea 
‘shore—and shall there never arise in my 
mind one solitary question, if there be a 
Fountain, and who is the Fountain of those 
mercies? Shall I make no search after the 
Hand that bestows them, nor try to reach the 
ocean fulness from which they continually 
emanate? Shall I take the gift, and live in 
wilful ignorance of the good Giver? There 
will, therefore, in the atheist, be not only the 


great guilt of not having searched and ex- 
4 * 


42 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


amined whether there be a God, but there 
will be the great ingratitude of never having 
tried to ascertain the fountain of those bles- 
sings, that he reaps and realizes every day. 

The first statement that has been made by 
way of objection to the existence of a God, is 
that adduced by Hume, Mirabeau, and Vol- 
taire—that it is as rational to suppose that 
the earth is eternal, as to suppose that there 
is a Maker of it, who is eternal in its stead. 
It is just as rational, say they, to presume 
that the earth has the attribute of eternal 
existence, as that there isa God who made 
the earth, and who has that attribute. 

Now we maintain, in opposition to this 
most extravagant suggestion, that there are 
very powerful proofs that the earth is not 
eternal, but on the other hand, no proofs that 
there is not an eternal God, who made it, 
And the proofs that the earth is not eternal, 
are very short and simple. 

We do not deny that the raw material of 
which the earth is formed may have existed 
millions of years. We do not deny that the 
rocks and the dust, of which the earth is 
composed, may be ten, twenty, or thirty 
thousand years old; but what we assert is, 
that the present collocation, disposition and 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 43 


arrangement of all that is upon the surface 
and in the subsoil of the earth, bears most 
decisive proof that the world as it is, is not 
older than the Mosaic record declares it to 
be.* 

To prove this, we need only refer to the 
limited range of history. Here is a fact we 
can all examine. We have nothing like 
authentic history older than four thousand 
years. ‘The Chinese have their mythology, 
and their wild and romantic legends; but it 
can be shown by internal evidence, that the 
documents of the Chinese are absurd and 
contradictory, and that instead of that nation 
being older than the age of the antediluvian 
patriarchs, it is not older than 2,500 or 3,000 
years at the utmost. 

Another proof of the recent collocation 
of the earth is deduced from a consideration 
of the progress and the expansive force 
of population. There are millions of miles 
upon the surface of the earth not yet 
peopled; but if the earth had been twenty 
thousand years or thirty thousand years old, 
the presumption is that it would have been 
covered with a population which it would 


_ *See Buckland’s Bridgewater Treatise. 


44 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


be scarcely adequate to maintain. Instead 
of that, if the earth should last other five 
thousand years, and the ratio of population 
should proceed as it has done, it would still 
be abundantly adequate to accommodate , 
and support all its children upon its surface. 

In the next place, the progress of science 
seems presumptive evidence, that the earth 
is not above four or five thousand years old. 
It is only within the last three hundred 
years, that the most brilliant discoveries in 
science have been made—that the most im- 
portant productions in poetry, history, and 
chronology have been brought to light, or 
created by the master-spirits of the world in 
which we live. 

If we take these facts—the fact that we 
have no authentic history older than three 
or four thousand years—the fact that the 
population of the earth has not yet’ covered 
one-half of it—and the fact that science and 
literature bear upon their brows the proofs 
and demonstrations of childhood, I think the 
presumption is overwhelming, that the earth 
in its present collocation is not older than 
the Mosaic record represents it to be. It is 
contrary to reason to suppose the earth to be 
eternal. It is rational to believe it the crea- 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 45 


tion of God, and evidence, therefore, of his 
existence. | 

There is a fact that has been brought to 
light by modern geologists, which demon- 
strates the interposition, just as the earth 
proves the existence, of ‘God. It has been 
found that the ocean and the earth seem 
(more or less) in various places to have 
interchanged their localities ; and it has been 
found moreover, on examining the successive 
strata that appear in the once depths of the 
ocean and beneath the surface of the present 
dry land, that there are fossil remains of 
whole races of animals that have become 
extinct at once, and of new races of animals 
that must have started or been called into 
being. There are successive strata, in which 
we shall find fossil remains of animals, to 
which we have no successors in living crea- 
tures at present upon the face of the earth; 
and at the time those animals must have 
been destroyed, new races, not one trace of 
which is to be found in the previous strata, 
must have started into being. Now the 
question is, How did the new race come into 
existence on the ruins of the old? It is clear 
that the fossil races now found in the strata 
of the earth were destroyed as by an instanta- 


46 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


neous stroke, and that the new races were 
next and no less suddenly originated and 
called into existence; this is perfectly ascer- 
tained: then the question is, How did the 
new races come into existence? In the first 
place, naturalists admit, that no fermentation 
or chemical process with which we are ac- 
quainted, can originate organic and animal 
life. In the second place, all are agreed that 
there is no such thing as the running into 
each other of different and distinct races of 
animals. The mule, for instance, is the first 
and last link of his race; he does not transmit 
the same species. If there be no possibility 
of life from chemical processes, if no blend- 
ing and intermingling of races of animals, 
then it follows that if whole races were over- 
whelmed (the remains of which may now be 
seen in the British Museum), and if new 
races immediately afterwards started into 
being, there was a fresh interposition of 
almighty and creative power at the origina- 
tion of a new race, and thus far a proof of a 
God. And thus the facts that have been 
discovered by modern geologists, and laid 
down and expounded so perspicuously by 
Dr. Buckland, prove in the simplest and 
most satisfactory manner that there is a God 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 47 


—a living and acting God, interposing at 
successive periods of the world, to create and 
originate new races of living and organized 
beings. This proof of the existence of a 
God alone has appeared to many most 
decisive. 

If we look at the present arrangement of 
matter, we are constrained to confess the 
presence of pEsign, and this would show 
that a Designer exists. 

For instance; if the stars had been placed 
more distant from each other than they actu- 
ally are, or if they were possessed of greater 
density, or if they moved with greater veloc- 
ity, there would be a jar and an interruption 
in that glorious harmony which ancient poets 
have noticed as the music of the spheres and 
of the solemn heavens. Is there no design 
or arrangement manifest in this? 

If we look at the mechanism of man’s 
body, we shall find it a perfect optimism ; that 
is to say, nothing can be added to it, to ren- 
der it more adapted to the sphere in which it 
is to live, and nothing can be withdrawn 
from it, without leaving it less fitted for the 
uses for which it is required. If we look at 
the five senses of man, we can see evident 
tokens of design. In the order of the way 


48 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


in which he is led to his daily sustenance, 
we see design. First of all, man looks at an 
object; and by looking at a thing, no conta- 
gion can pass from the object to the man; 
after he has looked at it, and the eye has 
pronounced it good, he then fouches it, and 
the fingers are so formed that contagion is 
not easily communicated through them; after 
he has looked at it and touched it, he then 
smells it; and after this last sense has pro- 
nounced a favourable verdict, he then ¢astes it. 
Thus you see, that the sense that is most re- 
mote from risk is called into play in the first 
instance; and the sense that is most easily 
affected is brought into exercise when the 
prior and less easily injured senses have all 
been satisfied. Now I ask, if here are not 
evident marks of design; and if of design, 
of a living God, who so designed it ? 

If it should be said, that all this, and all 
the exquisite anatomy both of men and of 
animals, is a fortuitous concourse of atoms, 
and that it is by mere chance that either are 
so constructed, then we ask—lIf it be true 
that chance has originated all, how is that we 
never find the presence of the blunders inci- 
dent to chance? Do we ever find the horse 
accidentally with wings? Do we ever find 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 49 


the elephant with feathers? Do we ever 
find the bird with four feet instead of two? 
Do we ever find a centaur in fact as in 
fable? Never. Yet if chance had origi- 
nated all, there would surely have been occa- 
sional deviations of this kind from the won- 
derful adaptation and harmony which we 
every where behold. In no instance do we 
find such blunders, such proofs of fortuitous 
concourse; in every instance all is beauti- 
fully, skilfully, and regularly made. 

If we refer to the eye of man, we shall 
find in it one of the most beautiful proofs of 
design one can possibly investigate. It is 
well known, indeed, that the finest discove- 
ries in optics are all approximations only to 
the perfection that is already displayed in the 
eye of man. By a power peculiar to itself, 
the eye is at once a microscope capable of 
examining the most minute things, and a 
telescope capable of seeing the most distant 
things; and this power of adaptation, by a 
contractile and dilating energy peculiarly its 
own, is given to no other material substance 
in the universe. 

If we examine the bones of the human 
body, what striking proofs do they present 
of design and o1 the existence of a God !— 

5 


50 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


The spine, for instance, is so made, that while 
it is the canal of life, itcan bend backward or 
forward, and each bone will move to the right 
or to the left upon its socket, without risk. 
The head is so constructed that we can turn 
it to the left or to the right, bend it forward 
or bend it backward, almost move it round, 
and yet the bones upon which it moves, with 
their various joints, surrounding and encas- 
ing a substance so delicate that to touch it 
with a pin point would extinguish life, are so 
strong, that they can bear three or four hun- 
dred pounds weight. Strength, variety of use 
and action, and elegance, are all concentrated 
here. Can all this be the result of chance ? 
Such chance would only be another name 
for a wise and benevolent God. 

If we examine a bird of the air, the traces 
of design are no less obvious. The feathers 
are most mathematically formed. Let me 
illustrate this: a pound of iron may be 
formed into a rod in two ways, Let us sup- 
pose it is to be formed into a rod exactly 
three feet in length. It may be either a solid 
rod, or it may be a hollow cylinder, thicker, 
though hollow, and still three feet long. Now 
it is found by experience, that the hollow rod 
is much stronger than the solid; this fact 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 51 


enables us to combine lightness and strength. 
Now the quill ends of the feathers of birds 
are all made upon this principle. They 
thus contain the maximum of strength with 
the minimum of weight; and so admirably 
adapted and adjusted to their purpose, that 
none but a designing God could have made 
them so. 

Let me allude to another illustration of 
design—the mole—a creature perhaps the 
least known and the least examined, though 
no creature gives more evidence of design in 
its structure. If you examine its covering, 
you find it has a fur, exceedingly short, but 
so close that the dust through which it passes 
cannot permeate it, and so dense and smooth, 
as well as close, that the warmth which it 
retains from flying off must be very great. 
If you look to its head, you find a bony car- 
tilage, evidently made for boring, and essen- 
tial to its operations asa miner. You find 
the eyes singularly small; so much so, that 
the common saying is, that the mole has no 
eyes at all, in order not to be inconvenienced 
in its operations. It has a short and strong 
neck, muscular and powerful fore feet. It is 
adapted with infinite exactness to its work. 
Now what does all this indicate? That it is 


52 IS.CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


unquestionably fitted and meant for subter- 
raneous excavations—to be the miner in our 
fields: the very creature and with the very 
habits which all natural history ascribes to it. 
Now I ask again, can all this be chance? 
Can a fortuitous concourse of atoms have 
originated such an exquisite piece of mechan- 
ism—a creature so admirably adapted for all 
the habits by which it was to be charac- 
terized? Wisdom, and foresight, and design, 
are transparent in all this. 

If we refer to the tribes of the sea, we find 
additional proofs of design. For instance, a 
certain amount of warmth is requisite to pro- 
duce fishes from the eggs that the parent fish 
leaves on the ocean and on the rivers. Hence 
we find, the fresh water fish deposits its eggs 
at the margin of the river, where the tem- 
perature is evidently warmest ; the salt water 
fish deposits its eggs on the surface of the 
ocean, where the sun’s rays most powerfully 
act; the crocodile deposits its eggs upon the 
warm sand, and buries them in it, in order to 
be hatched. Now these creatures cannot 
reason: they cannot enter into the mysteries 
of chemistry; they cannot solve a problem 
in mathematics ; they cannot explain the phe- 
nomena of the material universe around 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 53 


them; and yet they act with the skill and 
foresight with which the chemist and the 
naturalist would act, and embody in their 
instincts all the experience and knowledge 
attained by us during ten, twenty, or sd 
years of study. 

Let me quote another proof of design in 
the atmosphere around us. If there had 
been no atmosphere, man would have died 
the very moment that he was born into the 
world. If there had been no atmosphere, 
there could have been no sound; the sweet 
sounds of melody would be hushed—the 
harmonies of music would not be, and man 
would lose the exquisite joy that is to be 
derived from this elegant and beautiful 
accomplishment. If there had been no 
atmosphere, again, there would be no per- 
ceptible fragrance in the rose, nor sweetness 
in the perfume of the violet; there would be 
no possibility of escaping contagion through 
the intimations of the sense of smell pointing 
out its existence. Man’s sense of smell would 
be a piece of useless apparatus, if there were 
no air to be the vehicle of the particles, sweet 
or otherwise, that act upon that sense. Not 
only so, but if there were no atmosphere, 
there could be scarcely any light. If the 

5 


54 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


atmosphere and its refracting power were 
utterly destroyed, we should then see the 
sun to be a luminary possessed of tremen- 
dous brilliancy, and pouring down his rays 
direct upon the eyes of every one that looked 
upon him, from a fountain focus. There - 
would be no such thing as twilight in the 
morning, or twilight in the evening; but the 
brilliancy of meridian day would burst on 
man’s eyes with dazzling and destructive 
effect, the moment he opened them upon the 
world. If there were no atmosphere to 
refract and reflect the rays that come from 
the sun, each ray of light would come with 
such velocity that it would destroy the sight. 
That effect is prevented only by the admirable 
adjustment of forces with which God has in- 
vested the sun and the atmosphere that we 
breathe. 

In consequence of the existence of the 
atmosphere, there is a pressure upon a man’s 
body of thousands of pounds weight; there 
is a pressure equal to fifteen pounds weight 
upon every square inch of the body of each 
individual present. Now how is this to be 
borne without the animal machine being 
erushed to pieces? There is a previous ar- 
rangement that there shall be small quanti- 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 55 


ties of air in the internal parts of the body 
of man, which shall withstand that pressure, 
and make it to be unfelt and without pain. 
Here also is proof of design. 

In the next place, if we look to the compo- 
sition of the atmosphere, we see further and 
very striking proofs of design. The atmos- 
phere is composed of two distinct gases, 
called oxygen and nitrogen gas; and the 
ratio of these is—twenty-one parts of oxygen 
to seventy-nine parts of nitrogen. Now both 
these gases are deleterious of themselves. 
No man could breathe oxygen without being 
rapidly destroyed; and no man could breathe 
nitrogen without being instantly poisoned. 
Moreover, if there were much more oxygen 
in the. atmosphere than these twenty-one 
parts to seventy-nine, the whole system of 
man would be ina state of excitement that 
would soon terminate in death; and if there 
were a much greater proportion of nitrogen 
than these seventy-nine parts, man would be 
incapable of breathing the air. Then how is 
it, that we find the atmosphere composed of 
these two gases so exactly and exquisitely, 
and so maintained, that it is just the very at- 
mosphere made for man’s life, and man’s 
lungs the very lungs that were made to 


56 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


breathe man’s atmosphere? A _ thousand 
forces go to disturb these proportions. 
Every creature that breathes the air ab- 
sorbs the oxygen, and throws out at every 
respiration nitrogen and carbonic acid gas; 
and every fire that burns, and every lamp 
that is lighted, consumes the oxygen and 
gives out carbonic acid gas. How, then, 
does it come to pass, that with fires and 
lamps and millions of living creatures, men 
and cattle on a thousand hills, consuming the 
oxygen and pouring out carbonic acid gas in 
its stead, the atmosphere in course of years 
is not so deteriorated and vitiated that its 
proportions are altered, and it becomes unfit 
for man to respire? Why does not this very 
likely result happen? The beautiful pro- 
vision, the effect of wise design, to obviate 
such a catastrophe, is this—whilst animals 
absorb oxygen and give out carbonic acid 
gas, all vegetable substances absorb carbonic 
acid gas, and give out oxygen. And thus 
we find the vegetable world and the animal 
world exactly counterbalancing each other; 
what is poison to the one, is the very nutri- 
ment and life of the other. Can this be 
chance? Must it not be the arrangement of 
a wise and designing God ? 


THE EXISTENCE OF Gop. 57 


I call your attention to another and familiar 
proof of evident design, the home-born bee. 
The moment that this insect comes into ex- 
istence, in the month of April or May or 
June (it may be), it begins to lay up a store, 
providing for the winter. Now how does it 
know that winter is to come? Who taught 
the bee, that it was to provide its treasures 
for a season when those treasures could not 
be found? It is an instinct evidently im- 
parted by God with this design. 

It was necessary that the bee should trea- 
sure up the greatest quantity of honey in the 
least possible space. Now mark how this is 
arranged. There are three bodies (and only 
three) that can be placed close together 
without leaving any interstices; these are 
the perfect square, the equilateral triangle, 
and the hexahedron, or six-sided figure. No 
other forms can be placed together without 
some interstices being left. And the third, 
the hexahedron, is at once the Strongest and 
the most capacious. Now how remarkable 
it is, that the bee has chosen the hexahedron, 
and that every comb in a hive of bees is that 
which contains the greatest amount of honey 
in the least possible space, and leaves no 
interstices !—Kepler, the mathematician, cal- 


58 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


culated the angle that must be at the bottom 
of the cell, in order to ascertain what would 
be the best to form the base of a hexahedron 
comb, the most capacious and most fitted for 
juxta-position with others; and the very 
demonstration which mathematical calcula- 
tion proved, is exactly realized in every comb 
we find in a bee-hive. We have therefore 
in the bee and in the hive, and in all the ex- 
quisite adjustments by which they are char- 
acterized, the traces of palpable design—the 
evidences of an existing and a wise God. 

So then, if we look upward to the sky, 
and behold the sun and moon and stars all 
gloriously arranged and harmoniously mov- 
ing together, we are constrained to exclaim 
with the psalmist—“ The heavens declare the 
glory of God, and the firmament showeth 
His handywork.” If we look around us on 
the earth—on its hills, its vales, its feathered, 
its breathing, and its animated tenantry—we 
are constrained to acknowledge that a wise, 
an infinitely wise God must have planned 
and originated all. If we look into the 
ocean, which would instantly become stag- 
nant were it not for its incessant tides—if 
we look to the atmosphere, which would be 
the fountain of pollution and the vehicle of 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 59 


miasma, were it not for the air-currents 
awakened by the sun—we are constrained 
to confess, that ocean’s caves contain the 
traces of a God, that the broad bosom of the 
ground on which we tread bears all the traces 
of the footsteps of a God, and that the blazing 
sun and glorious stars, all in dumb but ex- 
pressive eloquence, tell to us—There is a 
God; and that God how wise, how great, 
how good! 

If, after we have looked at the exterior 
world, and at man’s body, that microcosm of 
wonders, we come to his mind, we shall find 
the equal proofs of infinite wisdom and of 
exquisite design, and therefore of aGod who 
thus designed ; design necessarily implying a 
designer. If man were only possessed of 
the five senses to which we have referred, 
but had no intellectual powers of recollection 
and memory such as we now find, it would 
come to pass that as long as the husband 
beheld his wife, he would recognize her, but 
would cease the instant she retired, to have 
any recollection of her; and if the father had 
nothing but his five senses, he would recognize 
his children while they were present, but the 
moment that distance, oceans and miles inter- 
vened, he would wholly forget their appear- 


60 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


ance. But to obviate this, there is placed in 
man’s bosom an intellectual faculty called 
the memory, at once the most wonderful and 
the most powerful. It can treasure in its 
capacious cells the recollections of threescore 
and ten, yea, of a thousand years; it can 
bring before us at once, and with the magic 
of a wish, paintings and persons, and scenes 
and landscapes, which it would take a hun- 
dred thousand square miles to contain, if 
they were all laid down on paper before us. 
The daguerreotype is but a faint approxima- 
tion of this stupendous power, that can con- 
jure up from the distance, at the moment it. 
is desired, the scenes, the events, the persons 
and the transactions of years and generations 
past. We can deposit in its stupendous 
depths countenances and landscapes, chrono- 
logical events and facts and occurrences: 
and they are so mysteriously laid up there, so 
classified, that whenever we wish to make 
use of them, we have only to will, and 
memory pours forth spontaneously the trea- 
sures we require, ready for the disposition 
that we may have intended for them. We 
may quote another faculty in man’s mind, 
equally demonstrative of a designing, creative 
God—Imagination. This power not only 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 61 


bears the proofs of wisdom, but the traces of 
vast benevolence. Take Scott, Milton, or 
Shakspeare, (1 pass no judgment on their 
writings or their character, I am speaking of 
them as poets ;) Milton, for instance ;—shut 
him up if you please in a gloomy cell, let the 
light of heaven cease to reach him—let the 
countenance of man cease to cheer him—yet 
that great poet will irradiate his cell with intel- 
lectual light—he will people it with ten thou- 
sand illustrious characters—he will make in 
it a spectacle more beauteous than land- 
scapes, and from being a gloomy dungeon it 
shall appear to his eye “in its fine frenzy 
rolling’ a vast and glorious panorama. What 
a stupendous power is this, that can give 
delight to the prisoner in his cell—that can 
people the gloomiest solitude with the recol- 
lections of past and the foreshadows of future 
years—that can originate dramatic sketches 
and give birth to poems, as magnificent in 
conception as they are interesting in perusal. 
And if we examine minutely all the faculties 
of man’s mind, we shall not only be struck 
with the proofs of design in each faculty 
apart, but with the evidences of benevolent 
design and wisdom, in the admirable way in 
which all those faculties are balanced. For 
6 


62 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


instance ; it is known that the least disar- 
rangement of the faculties of man’s mind 
will produce a degree of mania or of mad- 


ness ; if imagination be allowed to predomi- | 
nate, it will produce hypochondriasis, and if 


reason be allowed to predominate, it will pro- 
duce excessive suspicion, doubt, perplexity, 
difficulty ; if the exquisite harmony that sub- 
sists in the mind of man is interfered with or 
disturbed, madness in some or other of its 
most hideous shapes is the natural and neces- 
sary result. But so exquisitely balanced are 
all these powerful faculties, that if treated 
with ordinary care, they maintain their just 
proportions, operate in their destined spheres, 
and give happiness and pleasure to their pos- 
sessor. And lastly, if we refer to that stu- 
pendous power in man’s mind—Conscience 
~--we shall see not only a proof of design, 
but of the existence of a just and holy God. 
Judas, unable to bear the tortures of con- 
science, went forth and committed suicide; 
and the murderer has often been so harassed 
by the fears and the spectres which con- 
science has started into being, that he has 
been fain to rush forward and proclaim his 
guilt, and suffer the doom that justice awarded 
him. What can this be but the echo of the 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 63 


voice of God? We shall find no land and 
no race of barbarous and uncivilized men, in 
which the great landmarks of vice and vir- 
tue, of righteousness and wrong doing, are 
not more or less faintly recognised, felt, and 
acted on. Conscience, therefore, not only 
proclaims the existence of a God, but tells us 
that God is a just and holy God, and that he 
has appointed in man’s bosom, even in the 
bosom of the guiltiest and the most depraved, 
a monitor that even in its ruins and its degra- 
dation will tell «of righteousness, of temper- 
ance, and of judgment to come. 

These, then, are some evidences, (and 
others might be adduced)—or a few speci- 
mens, rather, of the mode in which we can 
demonstrate the existence of a God, even 
from the open book of the world in which 
we live, Itis therefore with exquisite beauty 
that one of our own poets declares the plain- 
ness and perspicuity with which nature tells 
us of a God. Milton says— 

“These are Thy glorious works, Parent of good, 

Almighty! Thine this universal frame, 

Thus wondrous fair. ‘Thyself how wondrous then! 

Unspeakable ; who sitt’st above these heav’ns, 

To us invisible or dimly seen 


In these Thy lowest works; yet these declare 
Thy goodness beyond thought, and power Divine,” 


§4 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


And another of our poets has said— — 


“ These, as they change, Almighty Father! these 
Are but the varied Gop, The rolling year 
Is fult of Thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring 
Thy beauty walks, Thy tenderness and love. 
Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm; 
Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles; 
And every sense, and every heart is joy. 
Then comes Thy glory in the Summer months, 
With light and heat refulgent, Then thy sun 
Shoots full perfection thro’ the swelling year ; 
And oft Thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks ; 
And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve, 
By brooks and groves, in hollow-whispering gales, 
Thy bounty shines in Autumn, unconfined, 
And spreads a common feast for all that lives, 
In Winter, awful Thou! with clouds and storms 
Around Thee thrown, tempest o’er tempest roll’d, 
Majestic darkness, on the whirlwind’s wing 
Riding sublime, Thou bid’st the world adore, 
And humblest nature with Thy northern blast. 


Mysterious round! What skill, what force Divine 
Deep-felt in these appear! A simple train, 

Yet so delightful, mix’d with such kind art, 

Such beauty and beneficence combined, 

Shade unperceived so softening into shade, 

And all so forming a harmonious whole, 

That, as they still succeed, they ravish still, 

But wandering oft, with brute unconscious gaze, 
Man marks not Thee; marks not the mighty Hand, 
That ever busy wheels the silent spheres, 

Works in the secret deep, shoots streaming thence 
The fair profusion that o’erspreads the Spring, 


altogether silent. 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 


Flings from the sun direct the flaming day, 
Feeds every creature, hurls the tempest forth, 
And, as on earth this grateful change revolves, 
With transport touches all the springs of life. 


Should fate command me to the farthest verge 
Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes, 
Rivers unknown to song, where first the sun 
Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beam 
Flames on th’ Atlantic isles, ’t is nought to me; 
Since God is ever present, ever felt, 

In the void waste, as in the city full; 

And where He vital breathes, there must be joy. 
When even at last the solemn hour shall come 
And wing my mystie flight to future worlds, 

I cheerful will obey ; there, with new powers, 
Will rising wonders sing. I cannot go 

Where Universal Love smiles not around ; 
Sustaining all yon orbs, and all their suns; 
From seeming evil, still educing good, 

And better thence again, and better still, 

In infinite progression. But I lose 

Myself in Him, in Light ineffable, » 


Come then, expressive silence! muse His praise.” 


65 


Nature, however, we are constrained to 


admit, proclaims the existence of a God; but 
concerning what that God is to us, Nature. is 
Nature tells us that there 


is a God, possessed of boundless wisdom and 


of vast benevolence ; but naiure’s oracles do 


not announce that that God will pardon sin. 
It gives us intimations from our conscience, 


6* 


66 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


that He is just; it gives us intimations from 
the mechanism of our frames, that He is infi- 
nitely wise ; it whispers to us, from the broad 
surface of the world we gaze on, that He is 
a benevolent God; but conscience, while it 
tells us that God is holy, tells us too, in the 
tones of a despair that it cannot dissipate, 
that man is a fallen, guilty, miserable sinner. 
I ask philosophy, How shall God be just 
while he justifies the ungodly? I ask of 
physiology, with all its bright and its brilliant 
announcements, Will God forgive me my 
sins? J ask of astronomy, as it discloses 
world piled on world, if amid the bright- 
ness and glory of those stars, if amid the 
splendour of those ten thousand lamps, it 
has discovered that there is “a just God, 
and yet a Saviour.” And all nature is 
dumb. Astronomy is dumb; the mechan- 
ism of a man’s frame is dumb, Still the 
great proposition, that must be solved before 
my dying pillow can be peace, remains un- 
explicated, unreconciled, unknown. I feel 
myself a sinner; my conscience tells me, my 
memory tells me, my judgment tells me— 
and you, my brethren, feed, each one within 
himself—“I am a guilty sinner.”? I ask, 
then, how will you bear the blaze of that in- 


ea — of 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 67 


effable light, in which the angels are stained 
with folly, and the burning seraphim seem 
touched with imperfection? I ask, «How 
shall man be just with God?” No sweet 
tones can come from the caves of the ocean, 
from the mines of the earth, from the stars 
in the firmament, from the discoveries of 
philosophy, from propositions, from sciences ; 
all there is dumb, hopelessly dumb. Where, 
then, shall I find it? Go with me, reader, 
to Him, whose dying cry is still heard, « My 
God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken 
Me ?”’—and after you have marked the rend- 
ing rocks, and the mantled sun, and the 
shrouded stars, and all nature convulsed 
with horror at the greatness of man’s guilt 
and the stupendousness of God’s love, then 
hear whispered from Him who spake as 
‘‘never man spake,’? even from the crucified 
Nazarene, “ Mercy and truth are in me met 
together, righteousness and peace have kissed 
each other.’’? Gaze into the face of nature, 
and God is veiled in darkness, in obscurity, 
in clouds; you cannot fully see Him. Gaze 
upon the brow of conscience, and conscience 
tells you that God is armed with ten thou- 
sand terrors to destroy you. But gaze into 
the countenance of Jesus, and He tells you, 


68 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


in His own thrilling and merciful tones, that 
God “is a sust God and yet a Saviour.” 
We discover God from nature by a process 
of reasoning, much of which falls dull and 
blunt upon the ordinary ear; but in the 
countenance of Jesus we discover God by 
testimony, which is the most impressive and 
the most certain of all intimations. For one 
witness to a fact is worth ten thousand syllo- 
gisms for the independent establishment of 
that fact. Hence in nature, God even at 
the best is dimly and imperfectly descried. 
But in the Gospel, the Lord of glory has 
come forth from His bosom, the personifica- 
tion of his love, the exemplar of His holi- 
ness, the result of His wisdom; and on Cal- 
vary, that sacred spot in the centre of God’s 
universe where the epochal hour “It is 
finished ”’ struck, God can come down to 
me, and behold in me, sinner as I am, a 
child, a son—“ and if a son, then an heir, an 
heir of God, and joint heir with Christ ??— 
and there I too can look up to God, and see 
no longer the angry and offended Judge, but 
recognize my Father and Christ’s Father, 
my God and Christ’s God. When, there- 
fore, we compare the uncertainties, clouds 
and darkness, that brood upon God as He 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 69 


is revealed in the book of nature—and when 
we look at the plainness and the perspi- 
cuity, with which Gop A Saviour is seen in 
the book of revelation—are we not con- 
strained to exclaim in the ecstasy of admira- 
tion and of gratitude, “« Thanks be unto God 
for His unspeakable gift,’ the Lord Jesus 
Christ ? 


70 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


CHAPTER III. 


IS A REVELATION FROM GOD TO MAN PROBABLE 
AND NECESSARY 


TxHosE who are fully convinced of the great 
truths of the Gospel—who have felt their 
sanctifying power upon their hearts and their 
peace upon their consciences, may say—such 
discussions are not profitable to us; we want, 
they say, living nutriment, not disquisitions 
about the shell that contains it: 

These essays are not meant for you, but 
for others. Yet you may find some interest- 
ing fact you have forgotten, or read some 
illustrative truth that makes brighter, if it 
does not make surer your faith. 

But the “ body of Christ”? is made up of 
several members, to each of whom a portion 
must be given; and readers, like congrega- 
tions, are composed of several sorts of indi- 
viduals; and those therefore who are ad- 
vanced in the Christian life must not grudge 
if we try to meet those who are not advanced 
(or probably opposed) on first principles, and 


REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 71 


lead them step by step to this most important 
conclusion—that the Bible has God for its 
Author, truth without any admixture of 
error for its matter, and salvation for its end. 
If I were the means of reclaiming one infidel 
to the knowledge and enjoyment of the Gos- 
pel, or of strengthening the convictions of one 
wavering mind, it would be worth while to 
spend and be spent in pursuit of even such a 
prize. I may not be the means of convincing 
some of what they are already fully con- 
vinced of; but this little work may be the 
means of their being able to meet the sceptic, 
and of their convincing him that our faith is 
no unreasonable or improbable or extrava- 
gant assumption. We live in times too 
when such knowledge is absolutely necessa- 
ry. Assertion, however eloquent or influen- 
tial the asserter may be, is no longer regarded 
as evidence—we must be able every one, 
and they that labour among others specially, 
to give to him that asketh them a reason of 
the hope that is in them. Now are you sure, 
reader, that you are able to give a reason, 
that will satisfy, not a Christian, but a scep- 
tic, that your faith has no frail foundation? 
That writing cannot be utterly destitute of 
good, which impresses upon our minds sub- 


72 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


stantial reasons for the faith that is in us, and 
enables us, when cast unhappily and in the 
course of this world’s business into the fel- 
lowship of the unbelieving, to convince them 
that we have not believed cunningly devised 
fables. 
+ On the subject, however, of a Divine reve- 
lation, our immediate topic, I will proceed, 
first, to show that there is nothing tincon- 
sistent with analogy and our experience in 
the fact of a revelation; and secondly, that 
there was great need for such a revelation. 
It may here, however, be proper to remark 
that by such revelation we mean pure, unde- 
filed and scriptural religion. Many have 
seen and rejected grievous corruptions bear- 
ing the name of Christianity. They have 
seen Christianity, not in its pure and unadul- 
terated glories, but in some form in which 
man has shaped it, or fresh from some of the 
moulds in which superstition has cast it. 
To reject Christianity in one of these, the 
form of Roman Catholicism for instance, 
indicates to my mind a greater degree of 
attachment to truth and a nobler intellect, 
than to embrace it. In that system, inqui- 
sitions stained with blood, liberty perishing 
in prison cells, literature pining away in 


REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 73 


cloisters, and female chastity and loveliness 
injured and destroyed in the abominable 
nurseries of convents and of nunneries, are 
proofs of the absence not of the presence of 
Christianity. These are not the fruits, and 
this system is not the product of the Gospel 
of Jesus. For the infidel to say, «I reject 
such a system,” is really to show that the 
fall has left within him remnants of moral 
sentiment not utterly extinguished, or oblite- 
rated. I was once told, by a French Pastor, 
that he himself had witnessed a statue of our 
Lord in France decked out in the robes of a 
Jesuit; on seeing which a Protestant minis- 
ter most appropriately wrote below on the 
pedestal—« Thus have they clothed Thee, 
my Saviour, lest any one should love Thee.” 
This is just the type of Christianity in the 
form of Popery. Thus have priests and 
popes contaminated and dismantled thee, O 
blessed Gospel, lest any one should believe 
and love and cherish thee. 

Christianity is not_a Church, a sect, or a 
shibboleth. It is the truth fresh from the 
fountain of truth—the word of God sound- 
ing forth from His own eternal oracles. 
Churches, like earthen vessels, are frail and 
liable to decay. Christianity, the revelation 

7 


74 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


of Jesus Christ, endures for ever; forms are 
mutable as the clouds; great truths are eter- 
nal as the stars. The religion I attempt to 
prove to be from God is the religion of the 
New Testament, and that alone—not carved 
into creeds, but pure and perfect as God has 
created it. This alone is Christianity. 

But I must here observe, that the infidel 
meets us with a preliminary objection. A 
revelation from God, he alleges, is contrary 
to all experience and analogies. This is his 
first objection; and some will not listen to 
any other argument, until we convince them 
that a revelation from God to man is not 
contrary to experience and analogy. 

A revelation is not contrary to experience. 
For how was the first man instructed? He 
must have come forth from the hands of his 
Maker, perfectly able to discourse of flowers 
and fruits and minerals and stars. Where 
got he language? “Where got he names for 
the animal creation? Where got he instruc- 
tion and experience? God taught him. If 
he had not been taught, the first evening that 
the sun set he would have believed that the 
whole world was come toanend. He would, 
otherwise, have perished from inexperience. 
It isa plain matter of fact—that God did at 


a 


- . 
>. tt. =  —— oo ae 


REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 75 


first teach man, and thus gave a revelation to 
man. Whether it be admitted or decided 
that the Mosaic record is true, there must 
have been a commencement to the successive 
links of humanity. The first man must 
have been taught, and if the Mosaic record 
be, as we believe, a true history, Adam was 
instructed of God and created perfect in 
knowledge, as well as perfect in all his 
powers. 

But apart from the Mosaic record, must 
we not be satisfied that there are in man’s 
mind and knowledge elements which must 
have been instilled at the first? Who com- 
municated them? Who gave man his first 
lesson? Must not language have been taught 
to man from heaven? It was alleged by 
some sceptics, that if you placed man in a 
savage wilderness he would instinctively 
know how to express himself in words; 
but the experiment was once made, and it 
was found that he grew up dumb. An en- 
thusiast, who went as far in the opposite 
direction, expressed his belief that if you 
were to isolate a man in a wilderness, he 
would be found to express himself in He- 
brew. The experiment was made and he 
grew up dumb. Who taught man then? 


76 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


Perhaps you will say his fathers, and they 
were taught by their forefathers. But who 
taught them? There must have been a time 
when the first man was taught. Surely 
God must have taught him. 

There is then, we allege, every probability 
that God has given or will give a revelation 
of His will. Can we believe that the God of 
nature is good, benevolent, and merciful, and 
yet that He will leave millions and millions 
more of the family He fashioned to grope in 
“darkness that may be felt?”? Is it at all 
probable, that God would continue to leave 
His dependent progeny to grope in thick 
darkness, without sending one solitary ray 
from the inaccessible light in which He lives, 
to lead the ignorant to the knowledge of their 
duty, their destiny, and their God? I say, 
the surprise should not be that God has given 
a revelation; the matter of surprise would 
be, if He had not. And therefore instead 
of it being improbable that He should give a 
revelation, we ought to hold it to be ex- 
tremely improbable that He should have left 
mankind without one particle of light direct 
as to their future destiny, hopes, and inheri- 
tance. 

All presumptions are in favour of the exist- 


REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 77 


ence of a communication from Ged. Shall 
the earthly father rarely fail to communicate 
with his offspring, and will our Heavenly 
Father leave His without a dim light and 
audible voice—a suflicient directory amid the 
darkness of sin—the din of conflict—and the 
perplexities of the world ? 

But such a revelation of God’s will is not 
contrary but according to our experience of 
nature, 

The child is taught by its father; the 
scholar is taught by his tutor; and the nez- 
perienced is taught by the experienced. Now 
what is a revelation but just the extension of 
this plan, just the addition of another link? 
If the young be taught by the aged, the 
Stripling by the patriarch, the inexperienced 
by the experienced, we have only to add 
another link to the chain, and we come to 
the natural presumption that the world may 
be or has been taught by its Creator, the 
human family by its Almighty Father. A 
revelation, therefore, so far from being con- 
trary to our experience or to the analogy of 
nature, is positively in full and perfect ac- 
cordance with all that we see and find in 
the world around us. It is, in other words, 


but the addition of another link to what we 
1 


78 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


see to be the evident chain, along and through 
which knowledge travels, What is the nine- 
teenth century, but the product of the 
eighteenth ? and what was the eighteenth, 
but the product of the seventeenth ? and what 
is all history, but the grey-haired fathers of 
the past teaching the children of the present ? 
and what is that present, but the inex- 
perienced of to-day learning from their pre- 
decessors the experience of yesterday ? And 
what finally is revelation, but the great and 
good Father bending the heavens and coming 
down and teaching His large family what He 
is and what they are? And if we wish to 
behold revelation personified in its most 
lovely form, we shall see it presented upon 
that occasion when Jesus knelt upon a hill- 
side in the midst of Palestine, with the 
twelve disciples kneeling around Him, and 
as their spokesman and their leader, said, 
‘Our Father, which art in heaven.”? It was 
the loveliest picture that ever was presented ; 
‘a Raphael and a Poussin would fail to con- 
vey by their expressive pencils the loveliness 
of that picture—the great God of heaven 
and of earth kneeling on the side of the bleak 
mountain He had made, and teaching His 


re 


REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 79 


apostles gathered around Him, to pray, “Our 
Father, which art in heaven ?” 

In the next place, what is the nature of 
the instruction that we derive, one from 
another? Is it not of an experimental and a 
moral kind? In other words, when we see 
the patriarch or the aged individual teaching 
the group that is around him, what is the 
nature of his teaching? He is teaching them 
all the dangers and the difficulties through 
which he has come; he is telling them how 
to withstand this peril, how to overcome 
that trial, how to meet this emergency, how 
to unravel that perplexity. In other words, 
his instruction is moral and directive; he 
teaches from the past how they are to com- 
port themselves throughout the future. Is it 
not kindred lessons when God teaches in 
revelation how we are to meet the difficul- 
ties, to overcome the trials, to vanquish the 
foes, and to inherit the glory and the happi- 
ness which lie before us? 


Revelation, then, instead of being contréry | 


to analogy and experience, is in full harmony 
with all experience and analogy. 


But a revelation was not only probable, 


but it was absolutely demanded by the state 
of the world previous to the advent of Christ. 


80 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


I might show that there_are wants in 
‘man’s heart, which all the philosophy | of a 
Plato cannot satisfy ; and feelings a and per- 
~plexities in man’s moral constitution, which 
_ “the prescriptions of moralists cannot meet. ob 
ight show, that there is a consciousness of 
sin, and a dread of punishment arising from 
“it, which cannot be stilled unless by what is 
Gaui in the oracles of God. But_I for- 
bear; I will quote only facts. I will show, 
first; from a view of the state of the ancient 
heathen, secondly, of the modern heathen, 


a and dastly, of infidels themselves, that a 


~~ revelation from God was absolutely necessary 
_ to save the earth from utter corruption. Left 
to itself, the population of the globe would 
have perished from its face, some by the 
hands of their enemies, others by their own. 
Creation sent up its deepest groans after its 
Creator. The human family unconsciously 
cried aloud for a word of truth and peace 
from Him that made them. Deplorable in- 
deed were the views entertained of the 
character of God in ancient heathen times. 
By one party of heathen philosophers, God 
was regarded merely as a great first Cause ; 
in other words, as the first wheel in a series 
of wheels, and not different from the rest of 


REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 8] 


the links that succeeded Him. Others of the 
heathen held that there was no God, but a 
kind of fatalism pervading heaven and earth, 
which necessitated fixed results, but that 
there was no_ superintending intelligent 
power. Another portion, the Epicureans, 
held that God was a Being wrapt in selfish- 
ness and self-complacency, and perfectly re- 
gardless of all that was doing in the world 
or transpiring amongst mankind. Another 
portion held that there was a multiplicity of 
gods—thousands, and thousands more, super- 
intending the world; and in Athens, such 
was the rage for gods, that the remark was 
made, that it was “more easy to find a god 
than a man;”’ and such was their rage for 
idol gods, that at last, when that most expres- 
sive language was exhausted and they could 
find no more names for invented deities, they 
raised an altar rw dyvword Oc, “to the un-) 
known God,” the undeseribed ged. Some of 
the gods which the heathen worshipped* 
were among the greatest monsters that ever 
walked the earth. Mereury was a thief; 
and because he was an expert thief, he was 
enrolled among the gods. Bacehus was a 
mere sensualist and drunkard; and therefore 
he was enrolled among the gods. Venus 


82 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 


was a dissipated and abandoned courtezan; 
» and therefore she was enrolled among the 
goddesses. Mars was a savage, that gloried 
in battle and in blood; and therefore he was 
deified and enrolled among the gods. In 
short, there is not one lust that nestles in the 
human heart, nor one vice that deforms and 
depraves human conduct, which was not 
positively deified, and which did not more or 
less characterize one of the gods in the Pan- 
_ theon of antiquity. 

Now if it be said, « Ah! but that was in 
an age not enlightened as the nineteenth cen- 
tury is’—lI answer, Are you aware that the 
very country in which there were such gods 
is the country in which, and in those very 
days, were such men as a Homer, a Sopho- 
cles, a Hesiod, a Euripides, a Plato, a Socra- 
tes, a Theocritus—the most distinguished 
philosophers and poets who ever adorned 
the history of mankind? Are you aware, 
that the gods I have here described were 
worshipped in the very country where 
Homer lived and Plato taught—in the very 
land too, where the harp of Virgil resownded 
its Meonian strains, and Cicero pleaded for 
the liberties and the rights of mankind—in 
the very country that gave birth to paintings 


2 | De eM me: 


ee ee eee ee ee ee 


Y marta 


REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 83 


which modern art cannot approach, and that 
produced statues which are still the master- 
pieces of the world? 

But if we refer to modern heathens, we 
find the very same, if not a worse theology. 
If we turn to the Hindoos, we find they have 
not less than three hundred and thirty mil- 
lions of gods; if to the Chinese, they have 
gods in every house and in every grove; and 
the missionary traveller Gutglaff states, that ~ 
he saw upon sign-boards in China,—* Gods 
made and repaired in this house,’?—than > 
which surely there cannot be a more de- 
grading and horrible evidence of the fearful 
idolatry and the wretched theology of that 
empire. In some parts of those eastern 
countries, they worship snakes and serpents 
and lizards and crocodiles, and even produc- 
tions of the vegetable kingdom; and such is 
their superstition, that they pray by wind- 
mills,and suppose that if the prayer is placed 
in the sail of the mill, and turned round by 
the wind, that prayer rises with singular 
acceptance to God. But if again you say— 
« This must be among a barbarous race ’’—I 
answer, Not at all. The Hindoos are, in 
mathematical science, among the most ac- 
complished people in the world. They are 


84 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


 - supposed to be the first inventors of the 


highest branch of it—the differential calcu- 
lus. The discovery of the mariner’s compass 
and of gunposvder are clearly and plainly 


Attributable to the Chinese. Moreover the 
‘Hindoos have all the English literature; they 


have our Shakspeare, and our Milton, and 


\our Addison, and our Johnson, all translated 


into Hindostanee—and even Hume’s Infidel 
Essays; all of which they read with great 
interest, and even with great admiration. 
They are not like the people of Tahiti or the 
South Sea Islands—a barbarous and uncivil- 
ized race; but a scientific and enlightened 
people. And yet such is the theology that 
flourishes under the wing of high intellectual 
knowledge! 

_What now are the views of God enter-_ 


" tained by modern infidels ? And let me 


preface my remarks here, by stating that 
whatever clear notions they have of God, 
they have stolen from the Bible, labelling 
their plagiarisms with the light of nature, 
whilst in their wickedness they deny the 
source from which they took them. But 
we will take their own definitions. Lord 
Bolingbroke says that power and wisdom 
are the only attributes of God, and that a 


REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 85 


superintending providence is an absurdity 
too great to be imagined. David Hume 
declares that it is unreasonable to believe in 
a wise and a good God, and that the notion 
of future rewards and punishments is a mere 
piece of priestcraft. Hobbes said that vice 
and virtue, Creator and creature, were all 
terms invented by man, but not founded in 
reality. If we pass from our own country- 
men to French infidels, Voltaire, D? Alembert, 
Mirabeau, and Diderot—they all deéclaré’that 
thereis© ho God, that there is no responsi- 
bility, that there are no rewards and no 
punishments in the world to come. 

Such are the views entertained respecting 
uod, by the most enlightened and advanced 
nations of antiquity—such the views of the 
most intelligent among modern heathen na- 
tions—and such the notions of three or four 
of the leading infidels and sceptics of recent 
times. They are all equally wretched be- 
yond utterance. Take them all, and place 
them, the best of them, beside the «I am 


THAT I am” of the illiterate Jews. Listen, ' 
after any or all of them, to the words, “ The * 


Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, 
long-suffering and abundant in goodness and 


truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving 
§ 


Ke 
af ee 


86 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


iniquity and transgression and sin ;”’ and say 
which is from above. 

Having thus looked at the notions enter-_ 
tained of God, we would next briefly review 
the notions of morality entertained among 
~ the three classes referred to; first the views _ 
of ancient heathens, next of modern heathens, 
“and lastly of infidels. ‘ 

One proof of the wretched views enter- 
tained of morality among the ancient heathen, 
is the notions they had of the nature of the 
gods. I have stated that Mercury was a 
thief, Bacchus a drunkard, and Jupiter a li- 
centious and blood-thirsty sensualist. These 
gods were all the creations of the people, and 
the exponents of their highest belief. Now 
if the heathen made gods of such characters, 
this alone will show that their morality must 
have been of a correspondingly wretched na- 
ture. Again; cruelty was practised among 
the ancients to an extent of which we have 
no modern instances. The ancient Cartha- 
ginians were in the habit of sacrificing chil- 
dren to their gods. The ancient Germans 
and Britons sacrificed human beings. The 
ancient Egyptians offered up yearly so many 
boys and girls to the Nile. The rites of 
Moloch were sanguinary beyond expression. 


REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 87 


Achilles, as related in Homer, immolated 
twelve Trojans. Sons and daughters were 
offered in sacrifice in the public markets, and 
their parents accustomed to preside, and the 
wretched Helots were occasionally destroyed 
by thousands, in order to arrest the increase 
of the slave population. A creditor, in an- 
cient times, could seize a debtor after so 
many days and sell him as a slave, or cut his 
body in pieces and send it to his wife and 
children. A father had the power of life and 
death over his children. Need I refer to the 
gladiatorial games, in which man fought 
with man, or men with wild beasts, while 
the ladies of the empire, the female aristocra- 
cy, gazed upon man plunging the sword in 
the breast of man, and then celebrated a feast 
in honour of the conqueror on the field 
whereon systematized murder had been com- 
mitted? Who is ignorant also of the fact 
that deformed children were legally de- 
stroyed? If we look to the nature of their 
worship of the ancient gods, we find that 
murder and homicide were rites of peculiar 
propitiatory value and of frequent practice. 
Cruelty was canonized. Lust was holy. In 
the temple of Venus a thousand prostitutes 
were the priestesses, and the accepted wor- 


88 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


ship accordingly; in the temple of Bacchus, 
sensualists and drunkards were believed to 
be peculiarly welcome to that god. Need I 
quote as proofs of the debasing immorality 
of ancient heathenism, the Aphrodisia, the 
‘Ludi Floriales, and the Lupercalia? Crimes 
not fit to be mentioned were common. 
These were the scenes of profligacy and sen- 
suality, and they disappeared or ceased to be 
celebrated in open day only before the light 
of Christianity. If we examine any or all 
of their religious rites and practices, we shall 
find that a foul and degrading immorality 
was their universal characteristic, with scarce- 
ly one ray of light or purity to alleviate the 
gloom. I might also mention the treatment 
of the female character in ancient nations. 
Woman at the best was but a slave in an- 
cient, Greece; she was no more than a slave 
in imperial Rome. The laws of divorce 
were such as would have gratified the most 
devoted follower of Owen, or Socialist of the 
present day. Ifa husband through passion 
or caprice chose to divorce his wife, it could 
be instantly done. She was regarded, not 
as his companion and his equal, but his 
slave. What is it, then, that has raised 
woman to that just and lofty position, which 


REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 89 


she now occupies in Christian lands? It is 
the Gospel. And nothing has so much sur- 


prised and startled me, as to hear of females » 


listening to the miserable sophistry of the 
lectures of the Socialist and Owenite schools. 
They little know the debt of gratitude they 
owe to the Gospel: they little know that it 
is Christianity that has asserted for them the 
right of being the equals and companions of 
the rougher and the ruder sex. But in 
ancient times there was no such equality. 
It is also known, such was the state of female 
education, that a learned lady was synony- 


- 


mous with a dissipated woman; a Corinthian, . 


a female inhabitant of Corinth, was a name 
that corresponded with courtezan. Aspasia, 
the admired and caressed of philosophers, 
would not now be admitted into decent so- 
ciety. The great philosophers of Greece, 
even those who rose highest in searching 
after the knowledge of God, were most of 
them gross sensualists. Such it is known 
was Socrates, and such was Plato; even 
those who taught a proud and vaunfing phi- 
losophy on the banks of the Ilyssus and amid 
the groves of Academus, were in their pri- 
vate conduct licentious debauchees. | 
Let us look next at_modern heathens, and 
8* 


90 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


_we shall find proofs of the prevalence of a 
_yet more miserable morality. Belzeni states 
that the modern inhabitants of Gournoo live 
in the tombs, the Tibboos live in caves, and 
the Bornoos have no proper names. The 
Caraibs are still cannibals. These enjoy the 
light of nature. What has made us to dif- 
fer? Can there be any doubt? In China 
woman is a most degraded and miserable 
being. Female infants are repeatedly destroy- 
ed. Gutzlaff states in his journal, that in 
walking the streets of Pekin he saw an in- 
fant cast into a stream and just on the verge 
of being drowned ; as there were five or six 
individuals standing by, he asked them why 
they suffered it to perish. “It is only a 
female,’’? was their answer. From a calcu- 
lation I have seen, I find that in Pekin alone 
there’ are twenty-four female suicides every 
day. The female character sickens at its op- 
pression : “ the iron has entered their souls,?? 
and taught them that life is but one scene of 
torture and of shame, and anxious to escape 
it, they are notorious for suicide. It is well 
known, that among the Hindoos, up to a 
very recent period (and the practice is only 
now put a stop to in a measure by the ener- 
getic efforts of the British Government) the 


REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY, 91 


moment the husband dies, the widow must 
lie down upon the funeral pyre, and be con-, 
sumed to ashes with the dead body of her 
husband. In Bengal alone fifteen thousand 
widows were computed to have been burnt’ 
every year, because their husbands had died. 
This then, is the respect in which the female 
sex is held in those countries where Chris- 
tianity is unknown. Infanticide, especially 
female infanticide, is so notorious in Hindos- 
tan, as to be subject of remark in almost 
every book that treats of the Hindoo charac- 
ter. Mothers seem even in this to indicate 
the unextinguished nobleness of their nature, 
which a wretched superstition would try to 
crush; rather than see their daughters treat- 
ed in the way in which they will be in after 
life, they are glad to throw them into the 
nearest river to put an end to their wretched 
existence. This is heathenism; this is 
science-cultivating heathenism. Among the 
modern Hindoos, lying, as testified by Sir 
John Shore, Governor-general of Bengal, 
and by many others, is almost reckoned a vir- 
tue; a lie, which a Christian Sunday scholar 
repudiates asa disgrace and ashame, is there 
almost a virtue and an excellency: and, 
though denied by some, it is too clearly 


92 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


proved to admit of dispute. In India there 
is a class called Thugs, who fancy they shall 
get an addition to their happiness hereafter 
for every human being they murder ; so that 
murder is not only their trade, but is actually 
part and parcel of their daily worship. 

_ And now what is the character of modern . 
infidel morality ? Ancient and modern hea-_ 
_then ethics are alike; let us see what_is the _ 
morality of those men, who treat. with such_ 
_ supercilious contempt the system of the Gos- _ 
_pel, and profess to be in possession of a purer 
and higher faith, 

Let us take, for instance, infidelity upon a 
large scale; let us go back to the year 1793. 
In France at that day, Christianity was de- 
throned ; the light of the Gospel, as far as the 
outward exhibition and acknowledgment of 
it were concerned, was almost quenched. The 
followers of infidelity had complete ascend- 
ency. The National Convention declared 
that the creed of France was—« No God ;’’) 
and they stood upon the graves of holy mar- 
tyrs, and wrote “ Death an eternal sleep ;’’ 
but with the marvellous inconsistency of poor 
miserable man, as if they felt they could not 
do without a God, they placed a harlot upon 
the chief altar of France and worshipped her 


REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY, 93 


as “ The goddess of reason ;’’ and yet these, 


the harlot-worshippers, are the men, that de- . 


Spise the attributes of God as revealed in 
the Gospel of his Son. Robespierre, over- 
whelmed by the growing disorganization, at 
Jength admitted that it was impossible society 
could hold together without a God, and that 
it would be necessary to invent one. Lord 
Herbert declares, that lust and passion are no 


more blameworthy than thirst or hunger. ° 


Hobbes, the celebrated infidel, maintained 
that right and wrong are mere quibbles of 
man’s imagination, and that there is no real 
distinction between them. Lord Bolingbroke 
asserted, that the chief end of man ‘was to 


gratify his lusts and passions, that he was so. 


made, and when he gratified these he got his 
greatest happiness. Hume declared that 
self-denial and humility were positive vices, 
and that adultery rather elevated than degra- 
ded the human character. Rousseau taught, 
that whatever man feels, is righty Paine, the 
gross blasphemer, died in drunkenness, Vol- 


(taire advocated the very depths of the lowest : 


possible sensuality. The morals of Blount 


were execrable. Yet these are paragons of | 


sceptical excellence. These are the exam- 
ples, that are to be substituted (“ wonder, O 


AM’. 


+ 


Be 


f\ wh 


+h 


94 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


heavens! and be astonished, O earth !”’) for 
the example of the meek and lowly Jesus. 
These are the patterns we are to follow, for 
which we are to part with Christianity : 
these are the principles we are to imbibe at 
the risk of being branded as bigots if we re- 
ject them. What a contrast are they to those 
glorious principles revealed in the sacred 
page; that ennoble whilst they save and 
cheer, whilst they sanctify the souls of the 
sons of men. 

I have thus touched upon the subject in 
two points of view. I need not state, that 


{ almost all these sceptics were men of gross 


and licentious lives. The only exception (if 
it be one, but it has been disputed, and dis- 
ane Puted with great probability)—the only ex- 


¢ ception is perhaps David Hume; the bulk of 
~ it _them were men of immoral and licentious 


lives. 

We have one striking exhibition of an in- 
fidel’s brightest thoughts, in some lines writ- 
ten in his dying moments by a man, gifted 
with great genius, capable of prodigious in- 
tellectual prowess, but of worthless principle, 
and yet more worthless practice—I mean 
the celebrated Lord Byron. He says— 


1% 


REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 95 
\ 


Wa ‘“ Though gay companions o’er the bowl 


bh 


Dispel awhile the sense of ill, 
Though pleasure fills the maddening. soul, 


_The heart—the heart is lonely still, 


“ Aye, but to die, and go, alas! 
Where all have gone, and all must go; 
To be the Nothing that I was, 

Ere born to life and living woe! 


‘Count o’er the joys thine hours have seen, 
Count o’er thy days from anguish free ; 
And know, whatever thou hast been, 

"Tis something better not to be, 


“Nay, for myself, so dark my fate 
‘Througl every turn of life hath been, 
Manand the world so much Thate, 
mu care-not, when I quit the scene.” 


Is this the fruit of infidelity ? Is this alla 
_dying infidel’s rest and hope? Contrast it 


with, the language of St. Paul—<I have 


fought a good fight, I have finished my 
course, I have kept the faith; henceforth 
there is laid up for me a crown of righteous- 
ness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, 
shall give me at that day.’”’ How great the 
contrast. This last is worthy of man; this 
requiem ennobles even dying man; this looks 
like the creed of veracity, of virtue, and of 
God, 

How did most of all these sceptics_ die? 


“f 


96 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


‘The facts are on record. Who has not read 
the account of the death of Voltaire; who ad- 
mitted the excellence of the religion he ridi- 
culed, than which nothing can be more pain- 
ful, and yet nothing else could be expected 
from the creed in which he was educated. It 
is said—“ During a long life he was con- 
tinually insulting the Scriptures and dissemi- 
nating moral poison. In his last illness he 
sent for Dr. Tronchin, who, when he came, 
found him in the greatest agonies, exclaiming 
with the utmost horror, «IJ am abandoned by_ 
God and _man.’”’ This is the man who ap- 
plied the epithet, “'The wretch,” to our 
blessed Lord, and the motto appénded.to all 
his writings was “Crush the wretch.”? We 
now hear what that man’s-death-bed was. 
“He then said, «Oh !. doctor, I will give you, 
half of what I am worth if you will give me_ 
six months’ life.’. The doctor answered, ¢ Sir, 
you cannot live six weeks.’ Voltaire replied, 
‘Then I shall go to hell.”?? Now I will 
read you also the account of his death-bed 
given ‘by Abbé Baruel. «In his last illness 
he sent for Diderot, D’Alembert, and others 
of his infidel companions, but they witnessed 
only their own shame. Often he would curse 
these men, and say—‘ Retire; it is you that. 


" REVELATION PROBABLE AND NECESSARY. 97 


have brought me to my present state.. I could 
have done without you all, but you could 
not exist without me.’ They could hear him, 
the prey of anguish and dread, alternately 


_Supplicating and blaspheming God; and in 


plaintive tones he would cry out, «O Jesus 
_Christ !’—-and complain that ‘he was aban- 
_doned by God and man.’”? And to crown 
all, this hoary infidel, this boaster against 
man and blasphemer of God, sent for a Ro- 


man Catholic priest, the Abbé Gualtier, to 


give him the sacrament!! Dr. Tronchin said, 
that the furies of Orestes could give but a 
faint idea of the state and conscience of Vol- 


~ .taire: 
irabeaudied calling out, “« Give me mere 
_laudanum, that I may not ae of eternity | 


_and of what is to come.” W the vulgar 
‘infidel, died drunk and pr The atheist 


‘Hobbes said in his last hours, “I am now’ 


about to take a leap in the dark.’ ‘The 


“philosophic David Hume, who had the utmost 
moral fortitude, : and the most of intellect and 


the least of feeling, died jesting about the 


boat of Charon, the fabled ferryman, and , 


passing the river Styx. It is matter of record, 

that Rousseau, a notorious debauchee, died 

saying, “OQ God, I give Thee my soul pure 
9 


Cu 
> 
eet 


ay * , 

98 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? ft 

and untainted as it came from Thy hands.’’ g 

. Rougseau was Protestant, Papist, Jansenist, — 
by turns. He lived in concubinage and 
adultery by turns, and consigned his illegiti- 

mate children to the Foundling Hospital. 

Behold, then, upon the one hand, the life 
and the death of the most noted infidels of 
modern times; and behold, upon the other 
hand, to take another Scripture example, the 

death of the martyr Stephen. Behold the | 
» dying sceptic asking for opium to extinguish 
sense and feeling and judgment—hear the 

blaspheming and the cursing of one, the : 

despair and cries for a few more minutes of | 

existence that start from the lips of another; | 

and, then listen to the dying accents of the 4 
Christian martyr, while heaven burst upon : 
his vision, “ Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ 
I ask, Which is the death of the righteous? 
which creed has power? which seems more 
worthy of God ?—and I feel each that reads 
will say, “ Let me die the death of the Chris- 

. tian, and let my last end be like his.” 

J ask now, after reading these facts, if there 
isnot now made out a necessity for God some- 
how and somewhere to interpose and speak, 
in order that men may hear. The state of 
ancient heathen theology shows there was a 


4 


? 


ha 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 99 


strong necessity for a revelation ; the state of 
modern heathen theology shows it; the best 
views of infidels show it; the morality of all 
of them, their life and their death, prove 
man’s deep necessity of a revelation, to teach 
him to live holy and to die happy. We 
maintain that such a revelation has been 
given, and is contained in this sacred volume. 
To see what sin has made man, ard where 
nature helplessly leaves him, read the first 
chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. To 
see what the Gospel makes man, to what 
pitch of glory and excellence it exalts him, 
read the eighth chapter of that same epistle. 

Let me urge one point in conclusion—the 
comparative condition of the Jews and the 


Greeks. Here are the Jews, who never pro-. 


duced a Homer in poetry, nor a Praxiteles 


in statuary, nor an Apelles in painting; neither. 
painter, nor pget, nor philosopher, worthy to. 
live through future ages; an illiterate and un-\ 
scientific nation. Here, on the other hand, are 


the Greeks—the most enlightened, the most 
cultivated, the most learned of nations. Among 
the illiterate Jews we find so sublime a view 
and knowledge of God, that all man’s efforts 
cannot add to it; but among the Greeks we 
find such wretched notions of God, that lan- 


") 


¥i 


100 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 


guage cannot depict the degradation of them. 


Now I ask, how happens it that in the nation — 


most distinguished for science there was the 
most low and degrading theology, and in the 
nation signalized by a total want of literature, 
there was a simple, and sublime, and elevat- 
ing theology? The answer is obvious. In 
Greece, you have the result of man’s grop- 
ing after God, man’s unaided discoveries 
concerning God; in Judea, you have God’s 
teaching and revelation of Himself—a proof 
so plain that “« he who runs may read.” 

The Bible alone has reclaimed the human 
mind from darkness, and the human heart 
from despair. Its truths are the strong pillars 
on which the whole fabric of our personal 
and social prosperity reposes; it has termi- 
nated the direst woes, kindled the splendours 
of heaven in the deepest darkness, and made 
the wide wastes of moral desolation blossom 
as the rose. 


THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. IOL 


CHAPTER IV. 
IS THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC ? 


It isa matter of fact, that Christianity has 
come into the world some time, and some 
where, and some how. Its influence, its 
plastic power, are seen, heard, and felt. Evi- 
dences of this crowd around us. The past 
naturally gives its tone to the present, and 
the present is more or less the offspring of 
the past. The fall of Constantinople is at 
this moment evident, for it exerted an influ- 
ence on the literature of Europe, that is felt 
at this day: the crusades, in the eleventh 
and twelfth centuries, materially affected the 
political condition of Europe; and by their 
surviving traces, the existence of both is 
proved. Christianity is no less demonstrably 
a fact. It has left its tone also upon kings, 
statutes, imperial rescripts, the literature, the 
poetry, and the science of the world, as is 
obvious to every reader or observer at this 
hour. There is no dispute about the fact 


of its existence. Its effects are visible; the 
9 * 


102 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


trophies of its victories, the footprints of its 
progress, are on the sands of time. No past 
occurrence has left so powerful a posthu- 
mous influence. The ceaseless waves of 
time have swept away the traces of Alexan- 
der’s battles, and Napoleon’s victories. They 
have only cleared off the weeds that dimmed 
the imperishable marks of Christianity. The 
only question is—When was Christianity in- 
troduced ? who are its authors? what are its 
claims to our belief as a system of revelation 
from God? 

The first branch of the argument I shall 
unfold, will be an effort to show, that the 
Bible (or the book that contains Christianity) 
is, genuine, and next, that it is authentic*— 
that is, the production of the writers whose 
names it bears, and that it has come down to 


* Genuine means that a book is the production of the 
writer whose name it bears. 

There is a thousand times more evidence that the 
Gospel of John was written by him, than there is that 
the Avabacis was written by Xenophon, or the Ars 
Poetica by Horace. The Jews hated the Christians ; 
and if the Christians had forged a book in after years, 
and ascribed it to a writer long since dead, the Jews 
would have exposed the forgery. 

Authentic means relating matters of fact as they 
occurred, and entitled therefore to full credit. 


THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 103 


us in its genuine and unadulterated form. 
This will be our first (and a most important) 
demonstration—that Christianity, as it is con- 
tained in the Bible, and as we have it printed 
before us, is precisely now as it was at first 
revealed. It may, in fact, be very easily 
shown that it is utterly impossible that the 
Bible can be the «forgery of a period subse- 
quent to the days in which it claims to have 
been written. 

Now, in the first place, the Jews were not 
only opposed to the truths contained in the 
New Testament, and to the whole of Chris- 
tianity as a system, but wherever they were 
able they imprisoned its apostolic preachers, 
as they had put its great Founder to an igno- 
minious death. If, therefore, at a period 
long subsequent to the death of Christ, a 
number of men had appeared in the world, 
drawn up a book which they designated by 
the name of Holy Scripture, and recorded 
these things which appear in it as facts when 
they were only the fancies of their own 
imagination, surely the Jews would have in- 
stantly reclaimed that no such events trans- 
pired, that no such person as Jesus Christ ap- 
peared in their capital, and that their cruci- 
fixion of him, and their alleged evil treat- 


104 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


ment of his apostles were mere fictions. But 
we read of no such objection recorded or at- 
tempted. We find on all sides a concurrent 
consent, among friends and foes, that the 
Bible was composed by the persons whose 
names it bears, under the circumstances and 
in the age wherein it professes to have come 
forth, and that its facts (whatever its doc- 
trines be) are true. 

In the next place, I have in my possession a 
considerable portion, if not the whole of the 
writings of three of those who are called the 
five apostolic fathers—that is, men who 
either talked with the apostles, or were per- 
sonally acquainted with them, or lived con- 
temporaneously with them. The five were 
Barnabas, Clement, Hermas, Ignatius, and 
Polycarp. The first and third are of little 
value; the last is supposed to be addressed 
in the book of Revelation as the minister or 
“angel” of the church in Smyrna. Now, in 
the writings of these fathers, from the year 
100 to the year 160, we shall find passages 
extracted from the writings of Paul, from 
the writings of John and Peter, from the 
Gospels of Matthew, of Mark, of Luke, 
and of John; and these extracts have some- 
times the names of the apostles by whom 


ee 


THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 105 


they were written attached to them, and 
have also appended the declaration of these 
apostolic writers, that the Scriptures thus 
quoted were the inspiration of the Almighty. 
This is most important testimony. In these 
most early writers, with every opportunity 
of conversing with the apostles, of proving 
their statements and weighing their argu- 
ments, we find whole passages of Sacred 
Writ verbatim as we read them in the word 
of God—extracted, quoted, approved, and 
acknowledged as the inspiration of God, and 
just as now printed in the Epistles and Gospels 
of Paul, John, Mark, and so on. And not 
only this; but we find in the post-apos- 
tolic fathers, as they are called, namely, 
Justin Martyr, Ireneus, Tertullian, and the 
two Gregories, Augustine and Jerome, from 
the year 160 to between 500 and 600, fre- 
quent and large quotations from different 
parts of the Bible, as books bearing the 
names of the writers which we now find at- 
tached to them in our Bible ; and also stating 
that those writings were the inspiration of 
God, composed under his guidance, by the 
writers whose names they bear, And what 
proves the purity of our Bible, there is no 
real difference between the passages quotea 


106 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


from it in these writings of the first five cen- 
turies, and those which we find in volumes 
of sermons accurately extracted in the nine- 
teenth century and in the authorized version. 
During these five centuries, then—during the 
earliest five centuries of the Christian Church 
—we have writers quoting from the writings 
contained in the Bible at great length, pas- 
sages the same as we read them, ascribing 
those writings to the authors whose names 
are now attached to them, and proclaiming it 
as a matter of universal admission among 
Christians that they were the inspiration of 
God. 

This, however, will not perhaps satisfy 
the sceptic. We therefore add that the 
earliest rejecters of Christianity never dis- 
puted, that the Gospels according to Mat- 
thew, Luke, and John, and the Epis- 
tles, were actually written by the persons 
whose names they bear, and at their pro- 
fessed date. For instance; the subtle infidel 
Porphyry, who was born in the year 233, 
and Julian the Apostate,* who lived in the 


* Some of the most noted were, the Emperor Julian, 
commonly called the Apostate, Celsus, Porphyry, Cerin- 
thus, Marcian. 


THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 107 


year 331, and Celsus, earlier than either, men 
of acute minds, and who laboured night and 
day to overturn the claims of the Bible, both 
admitted that it was written by the persons 
whose names are attached to it, and quote 
long passages from the Bible as unquestioned 
portions of its contents, and as written by 
the men named as its writers. Thus these 
men, who hated the Gospel, and were anxious 
to overturn it, yet retain in their writings 
portions of that Gospel, just as we now find 
them in the Bible, and never think of disput- 
ing their genuineness ; demonstrating thereby 
that the Bible is unmutilated, and that we 
have it now as it was in the first five centu- 
ries of the Christian era.* 

The next fact that I would adduce is, that 
translations were made at a very early era 
of almost the whole of Sacred Writ. For 
instance; the Septuagint is a Greek transla- 
tion of the Hebrew Bible made at least three 
centuries before the birth of Christ, and re- 
mains a proof that the Hebrew Bible as we 
now have it, is substantially the same that was 
used among the Jews three centuries before 


* Chrysostom employs this reasoning in his Sixth 
Homily, on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, vol. x. 
p-. 47. 


108 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


the birth of Christ. That the Jews preserved 
the Scriptures unmutilated is obvious from 
this fact alone, that our Lord never charged 
them with corrupting, though often with 
neglecting, the sacred text. He said they 
had “made void the word of God by theit 
traditions ;’? yet never once did our Lord 
charge them with mutilating or corrupting 
the sacred volume. Nay, so scrupulously 
particular were the Jews in preserving it, 
that they have counted the number of words, 
syllables, letters, and paragraphs, in every 
book, and recorded also the middle word, 
the middle chapter or paragraph, and how 
many periods or sentences are contained in 
each book. This was done long before the 
Christian era; it arose no doubt from super- 
stitious feelings, but still it has been over- 
ruled to demonstrate the great veneration 
which the Jews always cherished towards 
the Scriptures, and the sacred watchfulness 
with which they maintained the text of them 
inviolate. There are extant nearly 1,200 
manuscripts of the Old Testament, all agree- 
ing each substantially with the other. The 
festivals, too, observed by the Jews in the 
days of our Lord, and observed to this day 
by their descendants, can, as matters of fact, 


THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIc. 109 


be traced up to their recorded institution, and 
are thus voices descending from Horeb and 
Sinai, and the Red Sea, attesting the truth 
and reality of the Mosaic records. Hesiod’s 
Theogony isa dim reflection of Genesis. The 
golden age of the poets is the tradition of the 
history of Eden. The division of time into 
weeks among all nations refers to the account 
of creation. In reference to the New Testa- 
ment, I may observe, there was a translation 
of it in the second century into the Syriac 
tongue, in the third century into the Latin 
tongue, and in subsequent centuries into a 
variety of tongues, till ultimately it was 
translated into almost every language under 
heaven. Now, if there had been any depar- 
ture in subsequent ages from the sacred text, 
as it was inspired by the Spirit of God, and 
originally recorded by the apostles, then, by 
referring to the Syriac translation made in 
the second, or the Latin in the third century, 
we could discover the variance and expose 
the corruption. But if we take the sacred 
text as we now receive it, and compare it 
with that and the other early translations, we 
find that there is no contrariety, but on the 
contrary the most complete demonstration of 
: 10 


110 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


the unmutilated character of the word of 
God as we now possess it. 

It is here proper to state, that certain false 
and forged documents were brought forward 
in the third and fourth centuries, and were 
quoted by certain parties as the inspired 
word of God. Infidels too have said—The 
four Gospels are but a selection from a num- 
ber of Gospels, and it was merely a conclave 
of bishops or a camarilla of priests that deter- 
mined by a majority that the four Gospels 
you place in the Bible were alone inspired, 
and that the others were forgeries. Now, 
when a document claims to be written ina 
certain age and by a certain individual, if it 
be a forged document, we shall generally 
find in it internal disproofs so decided that 
you can very easily reject it. This applies 
to all the pseudo-Gospels which were con- 
cocted by heretics, and which were brought 
forward as written by the apostles. They 
were found to contain allusions and refer- 
ences to facts, customs, usages, and names, 
which did not exist till the fourth century 
of the Christian era. If those documents 
nad been written by the apostles, how could 
they speak about things as matters of present 
occurrence, which did not occur till four or 


THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 111 


five centuries after they were dead? To fur- 
nish a specimen of the mode of detecting such 
forgeries, I will refer to certain ancient litur- 
gies, which the Roman Catholics allege were 
drawn up by some of the apostles. In the 
course of controversy with a talented Roman 
Catholic on a late occasion, these liturgies 
were put forward as the inspiration of God; 
and one of them, in particular, was said to 
be drawn up by the apostle James. Now 
to show how satisfactorily we prove it to 
be a forgery, I will appeal to the account 
given of this liturgy by Dupin, the cele- 
brated, and I may add, impartial Roman 
Catholic historian. He says—“There re- 
mains only the liturgy attributed to St. 
James, which divers learned men have taken 
much pains to vindicate, but to no purpose ; 
for although it is more ancient than those 
we have already examined, yet we ought 
not to say that St. James was the author 
thereof, or that it was composed in his time.” 
Now hear his reasons; he examines the doc- 
ument, and ascertains its internal, its post- 
apostolical character, by evidence. “1: The 
Virgin Mary is called in this liturgy ‘the 
mother of God,’ and the Son and the Holy 
Ghost are said to be ‘consubstantial with the 


112 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


_Father;’ terms altogether unknown in St. 
James’s time,’’? and not known in the Chris- 
tian Church till the third century. “2: We 
find there the Trisagion and the Doxology 
(that is to say, the Sanctus and Gloria 
Patri), which were not generally recited in 
the Church until the f/¢A century. 3: There 
are collects for those shut up in monasteries ; 
can atiy man say there were monasteries in 
the time of James? 4: There is mention 
made of ‘confessors;’ a term that was not 
inserted in the Divine offices till a long time 
after James, according to the confession of 
Bellarmine. 5: In this liturgy there is men- 
tion made of churches, incense, altars ;” 
things, again, which did not exist till the 
third century. “6: We find many citations 
from the Epistles of St. Paul, the greater 
part of which were written after St. James’s 
death. Neither ought we to object, with the 
cardinals Bona and Bellarmine, that these 
things were afterwards inserted; because it 
is not probable they should be added in so 
many places; besides, the connexion and 
ceremonies of the whole liturgy do not agree 
with the time of the apostle.”? In this docu- 
ment then we find so marked references to 
events subsequent to the death of James, 


———————— 


THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 113 


that no man can come to the conclusion that 
it was written by that apostle. This is more 
or less the case with every forged document, 
and is true of all the pseudo-gospels; and if 
the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testa- 
ment had been composed in the third or 
fourth century, we should have found allu- 
sions to then existing customs or events, a 
peculiar phraseology, all belonging, not to 
the apostolic age, but to the age in which 
the documents were forged, and these, as in 
all similar instances, would have been so 
abundant that acute and ingenious men 
would long ere now have demonstrated the 
fraud. This is a specimen of the process 
that may be applied. The Epistles and the 
Gospels of the New Testament will bear, as 
they have already borne, the most sifting 
inquiry, the most penetrating inspection, and 
like gold tried in the furnace they will come 
out purer, and radiant with a greater glory 
than when they entered it. It may be useful 
to give a modern illustration also of this. 
The Wesleyan Methodists, not very long ago 
commemorated the centenary of Methodism. 
Suppose that on this occasion a book was 
produced, declared to have been published 
years ago, and to be the composition of Jonn 
10* 


114 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


Wesley, and suppose there is found in it a 
reference to the Roman Catholic Relief Bill 
of 1829, another to the Reform Bill of 1832, 
another to the equestrian statue just erected 
to the illustrious Duke of Wellington; would 
it not be objected, ‘ Here are references to 
events that occurred near a hundred years 
after the death of John Wesley, and these 
references evidently prove that the document 
cannot have been composed by him, It is 
the forgery of one who seeks to palm it on 
the world as the production of that cele- 
brated man.’ So is it with the Bible. If 
one could detect in it any reference to events 
long subsequent as having then transpired, 
we should have an internal proof of false- 
hood. But the fact is, it carries upon its 
brow the impressive demonstration of its 
parentage—the signature of God—the proof 
that it was composed by Matthew, and 
Mark, and Luke, and John, and Paul, and 
Peter, whose names are appended to their 
respective books in the Bible. 

The multiplicity of manuscripts is another 
evidence, which proves that the sacred Book 
has been handed down to us pure and una- 
dulterated. There is at this moment existing 
the Codex Bezex, or the Cambridge Manu- 


THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 115 


script, as it is called, which one distinguished 
editor, Dr. Kipling, almost proves to have 
been written in the second century ; but the 
most learned of modern analysts of the 
claims of that manuscript admit that it was 
written in the fourth or fifth century. We 
have another composed in the fifth century ; 
and hundreds of manuscripts written in the 
sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth cen- 
turies. These manuscripts were transcribed 
by monks and other individuals in their 
retirement ; and if any subsequent mutilation 
had been introduced into the sacred volume, 
these manuscripts drawn out by different 
individuals and in different ages would make 
apparent the corruptions that had crept in. 
But the truth is, we find that the hundred 
and fifty thousand different readings which 
Mills and Griesbach and others have col- 
lected, are most of them connected with 
letters, with accents, with commas and stops, 
and few of them with points of doctrine or 
practices of morality. Their number, too, 
proves the labour expended on this great 
subject. They are collected from all the dif- 
ferent manuscripts written long previous to 
the discovery of printing ; and still the least 
accurate manuscript of the New Testament 


116 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 


we possess does not contain a single devia- 
tion from the received text which would 
vitiate one vital and essential truth, Where 
an alteration occurs it is seen to be an error 
in transcribing, by finding the point affected 
by it distinctly recorded in other passages of 
Scripture. This is plain, that were all Gries- 
bach’s readings incorporated into the sacred 
text, neither Infidelity, nor Socinianism, nor 
Romanism, would derive the least advan- 
tage. 

But were the New Testament to disappear 
from the earth, it has been ascertained that 
nearly the whole of its contents could be 
gathered from the writings of the controver- 
sialists of the first five centuries. The very 
disputes which we deplore in one respect are 
thus the means not only of preserving the 
sacred text, but of rendering its corruption 
on either side impossible without detection. 

All this is manifest proof, that a great pre- 
siding Power must have superintended the 
safety and transmission of the word of God ; 
so that while it has passed through more 
dangers, encountered more difficulties, been 
scrutinized by more enemies, and more 
keenly, than any other book‘ under heaven, 
yet it is of all books the most perfect, of all 


i El 


A i ee et A 


THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 117 


ancient productions the most unmutilated 
and entire. 

There is still another proof of Christianity 
having begun at the period assigned to it; 
that presented by the sacraments and institu- 
tions recorded in the New Testament. Let 
us refer to‘the Sabbath. As far back as the 
seventh century, we find it observed all over 
the Christian world. In the second century 
it prevails over the Roman empire, is noticed 
by Justin Martyr and others, as introduced 
by Christ, and in consequence of the resur- 
rection of Christ from the dead. Now if any 
one had composed the New Testament at a 
subsequent period, instituting at that period 
the observance of the Sabbath as a duty, 
would not thousands have protested against 
the innovation? Would they not have said, 
it isa novelty? But none say so; the son 
received it from his father, and the father 
from his sires, and they from the apostles, 
who recorded as they received the sacred 
institute. We cannot name a century in 
which the sacraments were not publicly 
solemnized ; and every time we now behold 
baptism administered, or the Lord’s Supper 
observed, we have dumb but expressive proof 


118 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


of the true original and date of our most holy 
faith. 

If we refer not merely to infidels, such as 
Porphyry and Julian the Apostate—or to 
Christian writers, such as the historians of 
the Bible and the early fathers—but to 
heathen writers—we shall find the most dis- 
tinct and unqualified admission of the main 
facts recorded in the Bible. For instance, 
Tacitus,* Suetonius,t and Pliny, three Ro- 
man writers, make (one or other) the most 
distinct admission of the historical facts that 
there was such a person as Christ, that he 
was crucified by the Jews, and that it was 
reported he rose again. If we refer to 
Macrdbius, another Roman Writer, we find 


* Tacitus, a.p. 110, in his Annals, B. xy. chap. 44, 
thus writes, “ Auctor nominis ejus Christus, qui Tiberio 
imperante per procuratorem, Pontium Pilatum sup- 
plicio affectus erat.”—“The author of that name, or 
party, was Christ, who was punished with death by the 
Procurator, Pontius Pilate.” 

t Suetonius, a.v. 116, chap. 25, on Claudius, writes, 
“Judzeos impulsore Christo, assidue tumultuantes Roma 
expulit.”—“ He expelled the Jews (or Christians, whose 
origin was Judea,) from Rome, for their continual 
tumults, instigated by Christ.” 

t“Carmenque Christo quasi Deo dicere secum in- 
vicem.”—“ That they sing together, by turns, a hymn 
to Christ as to their God.” —Pliny, book x. page 97. 


THE BIBLE GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 119 


in him, as in Celsus, an account of the mur- 
der of the infants by Herod; and in this 
writer also we have an account of the great 
gloom, or eclipse, that overspread all Pales- 
tine at the hour of the crucifixion of the 
Lord of glory. According to Eusebius, there 
were in his day the records of the trial and 
condemnation of Christ, in the archives of 
Rome, and accessible to all. He appeals to 
them as evidence. So likewise do Justin 
A.D. 140; and Tertullian, a.p. 200. Celsus 
and Porphyry, in the second and third centu- 
ries, quote verbatim from the New Testa- 
ment facts they dispute, and passages we 
read in our churches Sabbath after Sabbath. 

If then we take the testimony of Jewish, 
Christian, heathen, or infidel writers—of 
critics, or rites, as the observance of the Sab- 
bath, and of the solemn sacraments; we see 
that they simultaneously combine to demon- 
strate that Christianity existed in the first 
century as a matter of fact; that the sacred 
books are in the present century verbatim as 
in the first, and were composed by the very 
men whose names are now appended to 
them in the English Bible. We have, in 
short, the whole Bible, Old and New Testa- 
ment, precisely as it was composed by Moses, 


120 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


and the Prophets, the evangelists and apos- 
tles, and all inspired of God; and the man 
who disbelieves the genuineness and authen- 
ticity and uncorrupted transmission of the 
Scriptures, notwithstanding the evidence we 
have given, must in consistency reject the 
genuineness of all works except those he 
Sees written, and the authenticity of all 
records, except of facts he himself has wit- 
nessed. 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 121 


CHAPTER V. 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 


Havine shown that the Bible is genuine 
and authentic, let me now try and ascertain 
if there be reason for believing that it is in- 
spired. 

The writers themselves claim inspiration. 
If they were not inspired, the Book is an 
awful lie, and its destruction would be a 
benefit. If they were not inspired, their 
assumption of it is inexplicable. If the apos- 
tles were bad men, it is quite clear they 
never would have spent their lives in incul- 
cating the purest morality. If they were 
good men, they never would have palmed a 
falsehood on the world. The evidence ig 
irresistible that they were goou men; and if 
they are proved to be so, then their own 
declaration that they were inspired by the 
Spirit of God, before any judge or jury in 
the world, would be recognized as no mean 
proof. It may be said, perhaps they were 


deceived. But were they men likely to be 
11 


122 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


deceived ? Were they fanatics? Were they 
wild enthusiasts? Did their conduct show 
that they were madmen? Do their writings 
show it? The very reverse is the fact. 
Nothing is more sensible, or more consistent, 
or more composed than the conduct, speeches, 
and writings of the apostles: and the argu- 
ment that would prove they were mad- 
men, or fanatics, would prove almost any 
absurdity. 

The most impartial, acute, and honest men 
in all ages of the church have admitted the 
inspiration of the Scriptures. The apostolic 
fathers, the post-apostolic fathers, the ablest 
writers on such topics in subsequent ages, 
have with one consent held that this book 
is inspired of God. They had examined 
its credentials, they had heard from their 
forefathers what was their judgment on its 
claims, and the unanimous conclusion of suc- 
cessive thousands is, that the apostles were 
what they professed to be—inspired of the 
Spirit of God. This surely is entitled to 
some weight. 

The morality of the Bible is so pure and 
lofty, that nothing but inspiration can account 
for it. Look at the wretched morality of 
the heathen; look at the equally wretched 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 123 


morality of the Rabbinical Jew; and then 
mark the sublime and lofty morality of the 
Gospel, and say then if its holy and enduring 
and lofty ethics do not proclaim, trumpet- 
tongued, that God alone, the Author of all 
holiness, must have inspired and originated 
it. In the Bible we shall find, that some of 
the very words which the heathen employed 
to denote vices, are used to denote virtues, 
and admitted to be virtues by all sound 
moralists. The word humble, for instance, 
was the epithet of a coward among the 
Romans. To say thata man was humilis, 
was to say he was a craven and a coward, 
But in the Bible, to say that a man is hum- 
ble, is the highest commendation of him. 
And every enlightened and righteous person 
in subsequent ages has admitted, that the 
Bible has redeemed the word from its gross 
corruption among the heathen, and restored 
it to its proper place in the temple of pure 
and lofty morality. 

The doctrines of the Bible are so grand, so 
far above the reach of man’s mind, that they 
alone proclaim the Bible inspired: It never 
entered into the mind of the most gifted of 
the heathen to conceive, stil less to define, 
the doctrine of the Trinity. Such a doctrine 


124 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


would not be invented by any writer of that 
age who designed to spread his name or tenets 
among the Greeks and Romans. But apart 
from this consideration, it does not look like 
human invention; it indicates an origin from, 
above. It never entered into man’s imagi- 
nation to anticipate that God should be Man, 
and Man should be God. The Trinity and 
the Incarnation are doctrines which human 
thought could never have invented, and if 
dreamed of, never have hazarded. 

The perfect harmony—harmony without 
unison—evidencing not a transcribing one 
from the other, but inspiration from a com- 
mon source —existing among the sacred 
evangelists, is another evidence that they 
were inspired by the Spirit of God. They 


were men of different habits, of different © 


degrees of education, living in different parts 
of the world, influenced by different circum- 
stances, but all recording the same truths, 
announcing the same doctrines, and varying 
scarcely by a single jot or tittle. Infidels 
have ransacked every page, to discover dis- 
crepancies in the sacred volume; but each 
alleged discrepancy, when it came to be ex- 
amined, turned out to be not only harmoni- 
ous with the whole, but also a new proof of 


t 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 125 


the inspiration of the Scriptures. For in- 
Stance, some fancied they had discovered a 
historical inaccuracy in the evangelist, when 
he says, that the High Priest at the cruci- 
fixion of our Lord was Caiaphas, for in the 
Jewish historian, Josephus, it is stated that 
the high priest that year was Joseph. Infi- 
dels vauntingly said, “ Here is a declaration 
on the part of those who profess to be in- 
spired, that Caiaphas was the high priest ; 
but here is a dispassionate, because, they say, 
a disinterested historian, who says that it was 
Joseph. It is evident that one or other must 
be wrong ;” and with the natural bias of 
scepticism, they determined that the evan- 
gelist must be wrong. But they were no 
less surprised than displeased, to find Josephus 
in a subsequent page recording that Joseph 
was also called Caiaphas; which evidently 
shows that the evangelist gave the right 
name, and that the difference was seeming, 
but not real. This is a specimen of the sup- 
posed discrepancies which the opponents of 
revelation profess to have discovered. 

But the greatest evidence of all, by which 
the inspiration of the sacred penmen is 
proved, is the stupendous miracles with 


which their announcement of the Gospel 
11* 


126 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


was universally attended. A miracle is 
Divine power setting its seal to Divine reve- 
lation. It is true, sceptics have exerted all 
their powers, in order to demonstrate that 
miracles are utterly impossible ; but not only , 
have their demonstrations been completely 
overturned by the writings of Reid, Butler, 
Stewart, Campbell, Horsley, and others, but 
still more triumphant evidences, if these 
were’necessary, have been educed of the 
reality of the miracles recorded in the Gos- 
pel. It has been found that Celsus and 
Porphyry, the sceptics, and even Mohammed, 
admitted in their days that miracles were 
performed by our Lord and his apostles. 
They did not deny the miracles, they only 
disputed the inferences drawn from them. 
Such attestations are most weighty. In 
more modern times, it has been said by infi- 
dels, that nature is fixed, and that we have 
no right to believe that miracles can have 
ever occurred. But who, or what, fixed 
nature? The will of God. And the same 
will that fixed nature in its frame-work, may 
transform, or change, or suspend the opera- 
tions of nature when and where He pleases. 
Hume argues that all our knowledge of the 
phenomena of nature is derived from experi- 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 127 


ence, and that our experience is uniformly 
against any miraculous occurrence. Uni- 
form experience must be the experience of 
every individual of every age; but what we 
allege is, that the experience of certain wit- 
nesses in the apostolic age differed from ours, 
in that they witnessed what we have not 
witnessed—a miraculous interposition. And 
what we maintain is, that there is sufficient 
testimony in favour alike of the facts attested, 
and the credibility of the attesters. We are 
sometimes told that if we would show them 
a miracle then they would believe one, but 
that unless they actually see a miracle per- 
formed, they cannot believe one. But how 
absurd and inconsistent is such reasoning! 
It is as much’as to say, show us Alexander 
the Great, and we will believe that such a 
monarch existed ; show us Julius Cesar, and 
we will believe that there was such a person; 
show us Bonaparte, and we will believe 
that he lived, and overran Europe with his 
victorious arms. We maintain that many 
miracles have been performed, and that there 
is ample and incontrovertible historical evi- 
dence that they were performed; and we 
call upon the-infidel not to demand the re- 
performance of a miracle which could kad 


128 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 


to no good results, but to search into that 
historical evidence for miracles which does 
already exist. And if we prove that miracles 
were once performed, and performed in order 
to constitute credentials of this book, then 
there is plain evidence that God interposed, 
and set the imprimatur of his approval, the 
seal of his sanction, on the doctrines and pre- 
cepts of the Bible. The wax attached to the 
lease or document, on which is struck the 
crest of the party, is valid at the end of cen- 
turies, and need not be repeated. So with a 
miracle. 

An objection frequently adduced by infi- 
dels against miracles is, that there have been 
many false miracles; and therefore they can- 
not believe that there have been any true. 
They quote the lying legends of the church 
of Rome, and the ridiculous miracles, if mir- 
acles they can be called, that heathens profess 
to have seen or to have performed; and 
with these they allege that they must class 
the miracles of the New Testament. Surely 
all must see the absurdity of this reasoning. 
If, because there have been false miracles 
there never have been true ones, then by the 
same reasoning, because there have been 
bad shillings there never have been good 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 129 


ones, and because there have been forged 
five-pound notes, there never have been real 
ones. In my judgment, the fact that there 
have been false miracles proves that there 
must have been sometimes frwe ones. For- 
gery always follows reality. But if the infi- 
del say, that these miraculous pretensions in 
the sacred writers arise from that longing 
after the supernatural, which is found in man 
in every age, then I ask, who implanted this 
universal desire after the supernatural? If 
God implanted this thirst, would it not seem 
to imply that it was his design to gratify it 
at some period of his intercourse with man? 
We allege, however, that if we compare the 
miracles recorded in the New Testament, 
with the miracles recorded in the fables of 
heathenism, we shall find the contrast so 
decided, that no doubt will remain that the 
latter bear the proofs of palpable imposition, 
while about the former there are such tokens 
of majesty, benevolence, and power, that 
every dispassionate spectator must admit, 
“ Truly this was the finger of God.’’ I have 
in my hand at this moment a book contain- 
ing an account of a number of ancient and 
modern miracles, said to be performed by 
priests in the dark ages; but they are so ab- 


130 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


surd, and most of them so utterly uncalled 
for, and so unproductive of any good result, 
that at the very first blush we must perceive 
they are lying legends. Lord Shrewsbury’s 
Adoloratas, and the effects of the miraculous 
medal of Mary, which are recent pseudo- 
miracles, are mere fanatical absurdities. But 
in the miracles of the Scriptures, we see such 
evidence of power, of noble and benevolent 
design, such pure and superhuman doctrine 
accompanying them, that we are constrained 
to acknowledge, that these miracles denote 
the interposition of Almighty power, as the 
doctrine they attest implies the interposition 
of sovereign and glorious grace. 

If, in short, Christianity be not from God, 
whence is it? This is a most important 
question. If we compare the morality of the 
Bible with that of the most celebrated pro- 
ductions of heathen philosophers, we shall 
find that the moral instructions of Jesus are 
so different from the morality of Plato, the 
precepts of the one so infinitely loftier than 
all the maxims of the other, the views of God 
enunciated by the Son of Mary so sublime 
and magnificent, and the views broached 
even by a Socrates so paltry and unworthy 
in comparison, that we must come to the 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 131 


conclusion that Christianity is not at least 
an offshoot from heathenism. Can we trace 
it, then, to Judaism? Did it evolve from it 
merely? If we will compare the miserable 
traditions of the Jews with the lofty and 
pure statements of the New Testament—or 
the most celebrated sayings of the most cele- 
brated Rabbis with the simple and majestic 
announcements of Jesus, or the ceremonial 
and carnal administration of the Levitical 
ages with the “life and immortality’’ that 
are clearly brought to light through the Gos- 
pel—we must come to the conclusion, that 
Christianity zs not the offspring of mere 
Judaism. ‘Then whence can this pure, this 
exalted, this sanctifying system have origi- 
nated? It came not from heathens; it is too 
pure to have sprung from such an origin. It 
came not from Judaism; it is too spiritual 
and exalted to have emanated directly and 
immediately thence. Then, whence came 
it? I can see no other rational conclusion 
than that Christianity came immediately from 
God. 

It was not a gradual introduction, progres- 
sively ripened; but it shot up at once in all 
the blossom of unprecedented loveliness—in 
all the beauty and fertility of great and good 


132 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


fruit—in the midst of the surrounding blight- 
ed and moral desert. It came into the world 
amid the gloom of human apostasy, like the 
sun bursting upon the darkness of midnight. 
It presented itself in the majesty of perfect 
manhood; a thing so utterly apart from the 
world—so obviously superior to the world— 
so evidently from above—that that mind 
indicates the greatest rationality and the 
least credulity, which believes the Scriptures 
to be a revelation from God. 

Rousseau was constrained to acknowledge, 
“The majesty of Scripture strikes me with 
admiration, as the purity of the Gospel has 
its influence on my heart. Peruse the works 
of our philosophers; with all their pomp of 
diction, how mean, how contemptible are 
they compared with the Scriptures. Is it 
possible that a book at once so simple and 
sublime should be merely the work of man? 
The Jewish authors were incapable of the 
diction, and strangers to the morality con- 
tained in the Gospel, the marks of whose 
truth are so striking and inimitable, that the 
inventor would be a more astonishing char- 
acter than the hero.”’— Works, vol. v. p. 215, 


a a ee a ee 


Is THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 133 


CHAPTER VI. 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIBED 2? 


Is the Bible inspired? is, perhaps, the most 
important question that can be asked. What 
is the Bible? That book which is no longer 
the monopoly of a few, but the possession 
and the privilege of the million. It begins 
with Genesis and ends with Revelation. It 
rejects the additions of the Romanist, and 
refuses the subtractions of the Socinian. 
Moses, Isaiah, John, Paul,and Peter, are but 
the trumpets; God only is the speaker. It 
has variety of style, but oneness of thought; 
the varied inflexions of many voices, but the 
one breath in all; the idiosyncrasies of men in 
its outward manifestation, but the inspiration 
of God in its inward vitality and substance. 
It is so common, so wide spread, that the sun 
never sets on its gleaming page. The east 
is Opening it while the west is closing it. Its 
words go round the world like sweet music, 
and increasing generations, right or wrong 
12 


134 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


believe it to be what they call it—the book 
of God! 

I have referred to the argument from mira- 
cles. It alone is evidence of inspiration. We 
have incontrovertible testimony to the occur- 
rence of miracles. The wheels of creation 
ceased their action that men might hear God. 
The suspension of its laws was the evidence 
of the interposition of God, and if such sus- 
pension took place in order to call man’s at- 
tention to what proclaims itself God’s word, 
then is the Bible inspired. Omnipotent power 
is the pedestal of inspired truth. The hand 
of God visibly holds the lamp of life divine. 
No need is there of repetition. The inces- 
sant repetition of a miracle would destroy 
its value. 

A powerful proof of the inspiration of the 
Bible cumulative with years, is prophecy. 
Two objections, destructive of each other, are 
adduced against it. 

The first is, that all the prophecies of the 
Old Testament are so obscure, that we can 
make them speak any thing. 

No honest man, who reads the predictions 
recorded in the Psalms—in the prophets, in 
the fifty-third of Isaiah, for instance, or those 


contained in the prophet Malachi—and com-. 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 135 


pares them with the fulfilment recorded in 
the New Testament—can fairly say that they 
are so obscure, as to be capable of being 
tortured or twisted in any way. One re- 
markable proof of this is the fact, that many 
of the Jews are so conscious of the exact de- 
lineation of Jesus of Nazareth in the fifty- 
third of Isaiah, that they have strained every 
nerve, and exerted every effort, and exhaust- 
ed the resources of absurdity, to prove that 
that chapter was not originally in the book 
of Isaiah: an effort as hopeless as it is 
wicked. 

The next objection is of a very opposite 
description.—That the prophecies respecting 
the Messiah have evidently been foisted into 
the Old Testament by Christians, subsequent 
to the events. 

Now we have seen that the translations 
which have been made from the Scriptures 
in every age, the Greek Septuagint for in- 
stance, made at least three hundred years be- 
fore the advent of Christ; the fact that our Lord 
never charged the Jews with mutilating the 
Old Testament—the extracts from the Sacred 
Scriptures contained in a variety of books 
and documents—the quotations embosomed 
in the folios of the fathers, word for word as 


136 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


in our Bible—all go to prove, that the charge 
that any book or chapter has been foisted in 
is utterly untenable. 

But is it not a most curious fact, that one 
infidel says they are so obscure that we can- 


not make any thing of them, and another in-. 


fidel says that they are so plain and clear 
that they must have been foisted in at a sub- 
sequent period? May we not quote both 
the objectors as auxiliaries in our defence ? 
When one thus contradicts another, it shows 
that the cause is not altogether of the most 
tenable kind. 

A prophecy was delivered two thousand 
years before the advent of Christ, that the 
descendants of Shem and of Japheth should 
be civilized and enlightened, and that the de- 
scendants of Ham should be servants of ser- 
vants, or slaves to their latest posterity. All 
this has been to the very letter fulfilled. We 
find the descendants of Japheth in Europe, 
and the descendants of Shem in Asia. Now 
the Europeans, Asiatics, the Eastern and 
Western Empires, or the Greeks and the Ro- 
mans, are admitted by all to be, as they long 
have been, the most enlightened nations of 
mankind. But we find the descendants of 
Ham at this moment slaves and bondmen; 


¥ 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 137 


not merely in the West Indies, as recently, 
but even now to a greater extent than ever 
could have been believed, as has been too 
truly and painfully proved by the late Mr. 
Buxton, in his work written expressly upon 
this subject. The descendants of Ham are 
slaves up to the present period; thereby 
giving at this day the most palpable and yet 
unconscious fulfilment of a prediction deliver- 
ed more than four thousand years ago. 

It was said of Ishmael that his descendants 
should be “ wild-ass men,” that their hand 
should be against every man, and every 
man’s hand against them, that they should 
be unsettled and dwell in tents. Now any 
traveller or historian will testify, that the de- 
scendants of Ishmael at this moment are the 
wandering Arabs; in whose case and con- 
dition we have the literal and exact fulfil- 
ment of an ancient prophecy, upwards of four 
thousand years old. 

If we take the predictions respecting 
Babylon and Nineveh in Isaiah and Jeremiah 
on the one hand, and what Infidel as well as 
Christian travellers have described in their 
writings on the other, we shall see that every 
prophecy has been fulfilled, not merely in 

12* 


138 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


the bulk, but even in its jots and tittles, in the 
destruction of those cities. 

Full four thousand years ago, and at sub- 
sequent periods, prophecies were delivered 
and are recorded in Scripture, respecting the 
future condition of the Jews. It was said, 
that they should be long “ without a sacrifice 
and without an ephod and without an altar ;”’ 
that they should be scattered, and yet dis- 
tinct and separate, in all nations; that they 
should be “a scoff and a by-word’’ amid 
all the kingdoms of the earth. Is not this 
fulfilled before our eyes? Is not every Jew 
that walks the streets, a dumb and re- 
luctant witness to the truth of the word of 
God? 

There is a prophecy respecting the Church 
of Rome in the New Testament, of a most 
minute character, uttered eighteen centuries 
ago. Let us compare with it what are the 
known and avowed doctrines of that awful 
apostasy, and we shall see it exactly fulfilled. 
«“ The mystery of iniquity doth already work ; 
only he who now letteth will let, until he be 
taken out of the way’’—(that is, the Roman 
emperor will prevent its development, until 
ne be overturned;) “and then shall that 
Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 139 


consume with the Spirit of his mouth, and 
shall destroy with the brightness of his com- 
ing: even him whose coming is after the 
working of Satan, with all power and signs 
and lying wonders, and with all deceivable- 
ness and unrighteousness in them that 
perish.” And again, in the first epistle 
of Paul to Timothy :—« Now the Spirit 
‘speaketh expressly, that in the latter times 
some shall depart from the faith’’ (implying 
that they had formerly been of the faith ;) 
“siving heed to seducing spirits and doc- 
trines of devils’ (of demons, that is, of men 
canonized ;) “speaking lies in hypocrisy ; 
having their consciences seared with a hot 
iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding 
to abstain from meats, which God hath 
created to be received with thanksgiving of 
them which believe and know the truth.’’ 
The Rev. Mr. Nangle, a Protestant minister 
in the island of Achill, stated in his interest- 
ing periodical, called The Achill Herald, 
that on one of his fellow-labourers, a Christ- 
lan minister, reading this passage to a num- 
ber of Roman Catholics in that island, they 
replied—“ This evidently describes our clergy, 
but you have a printing-press in the island, 
and you must have put this into the Bible in 


140 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


order to fasten it upon our clergy.’ Thisa 
striking testimony to the fact, that the prophe- 
cy is a true and natural delineation of that 
dreadful and antichristian apostasy, of which 
they were the victims. If we refer to the 
seventeenth and eighteenth chapters of the 
Apocalypse we shall find a still more ex- 
panded description of that superstition. Each 
prediction in which the apostle Paul and the 
evangelist John so minutely described and 
predicted that apostasy, proves they wrote 
under the inspiration and guidance of Him 
who saw the future as clearly as the pre- 
sent. 

I might also refer to the seven Churches 
of Asia, which have been preserved or 
destroyed, more or Jess perpetuated or swept 
away, according to the extent of the promise 
or the threatening contained in the second 
and third chapters of the book of the Revela- 
tion. Thus do Tyre from its bleak strand, 
and Babylon from its molten masses, Sodom 
and Gomorrah from their ashes, Nineveh 
from its rocks, on which the fishermen now 
bleach their nets, the Jew on our streets, the 
African in his chains, the Cossack on his 
steppes, and the Arab in his tent, the Church 
of Rome in her apostasy, and the Church of 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 14] 


Christ in her brightening glory, Judah deso- 
late, and Israel scattered and peeled—al/, all, 
proclaim with simultaneous and irresistible 
force, that the Bible is the book of God— 
that “holy men of old spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost’”’—that “Thy 
word is truth.’’ 

We must now specially turn, but as briefly 
as the nature of the subject will allow, to the 
predictions contained in the Old Testament 
Scriptures in reference to the Lord Jesus 
Christ. Every feature which was predicted 
of the Lord Jesus Christ by ancient prophets 
was realized and found in Him, and in Him 
alone, when He appeared in the world. I 
will merely state two or three points. The 
first prophecy is, that the Messiah should 
come. We find this in the promise that 
“the woman’s seed should bruise the head. 
of the serpent ;”’ that “the glory of the Lord 
should be revealed ;’’ that “the desire of all 
nations should come.” The fulfilment we 
have in the New Testament. We read also, 
in the forty-ninth of Genesis, the ¢?me when 
He should come—* The sceptre shall not 
depart out of Judah, nor a lawgiver from 
between his feet, until Shiloh come;’’ and 
also that He was to come at a time of uni- 


142 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


versal peace, and while the second temple 
was standing, and 490 years after the re- 
building of Jerusalem. All this, which was 
matter of ancient prophecy, was literally ful- 
filled. Again, it was predicted, that the 
Messiah should be God and man together. 
It was said to Him, “Thou art my Son,” 
and the Jews showed that by the title, «Son 
of God,” they understood essential Deity ; 
and again, “ He shall come forth, whose go- 
ings forth have been of old and for ever ;’’ 
and also it was predicted, that He should be 
descended from the woman, from Abraham, 
from Jacob, from David. The fulfilment 
was, when “in the fulness of time God sent 
forth his Son, made of a woman, made under 
the law, to redeem” us. It was predicted, 
moreover, that He should be born of a virgin ; 
“Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a 
son.”? And this was fulfilled. The place 
where He was to be born was stated: * Thou 
Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little 
among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee 
shall He come forth unto me, that is to be ruler 
in Israel.”?, And this was exactly fulfilled. 
A prophet, in the spirit and power of Elias, 
was to precede Him; thus in Malachi— 
“ Behold, I will send my messenger, and he 
shall prepare the way before me.’? And 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 1438 


this was claimed by Christ and the Baptist, 
as a prediction and portrait of them. It was 
predicted also, that the Messiah was to be a 
prophet; “I will raise them up a prophet 
from among their brethren, like unto thee,’’ 
the Almighty said to Moses. And “the 
woman said to Him, Sir, I perceive that 
Thou art a prophet;” and again, in John, 
«Of a truth this is that prophet;” and in 
Matthew, “They took Him for a prophet; ”’ 
all, fulfilments of the prediction. It was 
predicted how He should make His public 
entry into Jerusalem—“ riding upon an ass, 
and upon a colt, the foal of an ass.”’? This 
was verbatim fulfilled. It was predicted, 
that the Messiah should be poor and de- 
spised, and betrayed by one of His disciples 
for thirty pieces of silver. This was literally 
fulfilled. It was predicted, that Messiah 
should suffer pain and death for the sins 
of the world. This was literally fulfilled. 
It was predicted, that vinegar and gall 
should be offered to Him upon the cross, 
and that His garments should be divided, 
and lots cast whose they should be. This 
was literally and exactly fulfilled. It was 
predicted, that “not a bone” of the Mes- 
siah should be broken. This was literally 
and exactly fulfilled. It was predicted, that 


144 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


the Messiah should rise from the dead and 
ascend into heaven. This was _ literally 
fulfilled. That He was to enlighten men, 
that He was called to be the anointed of 
God, that He was to offer Himself a sacri- 
fice for sin, that He was to be a Saviour, 
that He was to be a Mediator, that He was 
to be an Intercessor, that He was to be a 
King, that He was to be the Head and Ruler 
of the Church, that He was to be exalted 
after his sufferings—all these things were 
predicted, some of them 400 years, some 
of them 2,000 years previous to the time 
when they actually took place; and now, 
when we recollect that these predictions 
seemed to be contradictory of each other, 
and when we see, nevertheless, that the 
seeming contradictions all meet and are har- 
monized in the person of the Lord of glory, 
is it not a far greater task upon credulity to 
suppose that the prophets wrote at random, 
than it is to believe that they were inspired 
by God, to whom past, present, and future 
are transparent, and wrote under the influ- 
ence of the Holy Ghost? Suppose that at 
Berlin a man made a finger, that at St. 
Petersburg another made a thumb, and a 
third in another place an arm, a fourth in 
London made a hand, that in Edinburgh a 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 145 


fifth made a toe, that at Inverness a sixth 
made a foot, that in Dublin a seventh made 
a head, that every member of the human 
body was made of marble in distant places, 
in different and distant times, and that ata 
certain period the sculptors assembled in 
London, and that when they tried to put 
together these different limbs, all made in 
different places and at different times, and 
without any communication, they formed 
that masterpiece of genius, the Apollo Belvi- 
dere, now seen on the Continent, what could 
we infer? That they had a common arche- 
type, that a great presiding architect must 
have actuated every hand, guided every 
chisel, instructed every sculptor. Now this 
is literally realized in the predictions and 
appearance of Jesus Christ. Prophets, at 
different times, in different parts of the world, 
described His various features in various 
terms and various forms; and though they 
seemed before the fulfilment to contradict 
each other, yet when Christ comes it is found 
that every feature is realized in Him; and 
He is the only and exclusive being in whom 
all can converge and be perfectly illustrated. 
Is it possible to conceive that the prophets 


wrote at random? is it possible to believe 
13 


146 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


that it was by mere chance that they pictured 
the future Christ? That man indicates the 
greatest amount of common sense, as well as 
the soundest philosophy, who concludes that 
they spake and wrote as they were guided 
and directed by the Spirit of God. 

There was also a series of predictions de- 
livered by our Lord himself. He gave a 
most minute description of the fearful judg- 
ments that were to overtake Jerusalem, and 
the sad severities which were to be exercised 
upon its doomed and guilty inhabitants, about 
forty years before its downfall. This is 
recorded in the twenty-fourth chapter of 
the Gospel of Matthew. Our Lord’s first 
prediction was, that when the time drew 
near, “ many should come in His name, say- 
ing, Iam Christ; and should deceive many.” 
Now Josephus, who neither embraced the 
Gospel, nor was favourable to Christianity, 
relates that, prior to the capture of Jeru- 
salem, “the land was overrun with magi- 
cians, seducers, and apostates, who drew the 
people after them in multitudes, into solitudes 
and deserts to see signs and miracles. Among 
these apostates were Dositheus the Sama- 
ritan, who claimed to be Christ — Simon 
Magus, who said he was the Son of God— 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 147 


and Theudas, who pretended to be a pro- 
phet.”” This prophecy of our Lord was, 
therefore, literally fulfilled. The second pre- 
dicted sign was, that wars and commotions 
should precede the destruction of Jerusalem ; 
aud these wars and commotions Josephus 
states took place. Four emperors, Nero, 
Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, suffered violent 
deaths within the short space of eighteen 
months; and the emperor Caligula com- 
manded his statue to be set up in the temple, 
and in consequence of the refusal of’ the 
Jews, he threatened them with an invasion, 
which was prevented by death. There was 
also a prediction that “nation should rise up 
against nation.’”? This took place in almost 
every quarter of the Roman empire, and is 
recorded by Josephus. At Alexandria the 
old enmity was revived between the Jews 
and the heathens, and the Jews perished by 
thousands; the people of Damascus con- 
spired against the Jews; the Jews who dwelt 
at Perea against the people that dwelt at 
Philadelphia, and the whole nation of the 
Jews against the Romans. The third pro- 
phecy of our Lord was, “famines and _ pesti- 
lences”’? before the destruction of Jerusalem. 
And Josephus, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Euse 


148 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


bius record, that famines and pestilences 
occurred in divers places, and of a very fear- 
ful character, precisely as we find it pre- 
dicted. The fourth sign was, “ earthquakes.” 
These literally took place before the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem ; one in Crete in the reign 
of Claudius, and others at Smyrna, Samos, 
Miletus, and other places in which the Jews 
were settled. Many cities were overthrown, 
and among others the celebrated city of 
Pompeii was almost demolished by an earth- 
quake. These facts are recorded by heathen 
historians. The fifth prophecy of our Lord 
was, fearful sights and signs from heaven. 
And Josephus says, “ There broke out a pro- 
digious storm in the night with the utmost 
violence — lightnings and rains; and these 
things (adds Josephus) were a manifest indi- 
cation that some destruction was coming 
upon men, when the system of this world 
was thrown into such disorder.”? The same 
historian (not a Christian, but a Jew,) says, 
that a star hung over the city like a sword, 
and a comet continued over it for a whole 
year; also that when the people were assem- 
bled to celebrate the feast of unleavened 
bread, so great a light shone round the altar 
and the holy house that it appeared to be 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 149 


bright day-time, and this continued for half 
an hour. At the same feast the eastern gate 
of the temple, which was of solid brass, and 
was very heavy, and was scarcely shut in an 
evening by twenty men, and had bolts fas- 
tened very deep into the firm floor, was seen 
to be opened of its own accord about mid- 
night. Moreover, before the setting of the 
sun, there were seen all over the sky chariots 
and troops of soldiers in their armour fight- 
ing in the clouds and surrounding cities ; also 
at the feast of Pentecost, as the priests were 
going into the inner temple, they heard a 
voice as of a multitude crying, “ Let us 
depart hence.’”’ And Josephus records it as 
more terrible than all, that an ordinary coun- 
try fellow went about the city day and night, 
crying out, “ A voice from the east, a voice 
from the west, a voice from the four winds, 
a voice against Jerusalem and the temple.’’ 
The magistrates endeavoured by stripes to 
restrain him, but he still cried with a mourn- 
ful voice, at every stroke of the whip, “ Woe, 
woe to Jerusalem and the temple.’”? These 
are some of the fearful signs and great sights 
from heaven which our Lord had predicted. 
Dr. Jortin remarks on these—“ If Christ had 
not foretold this, many who give little need 
13* 


150 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


to portents would have supposed that Jose- 
phus exaggerated, and that Tacitus was mis- 
informed; but as the testimonies of Josephus 
and Tacitus confirm the predictions of Christ, 
so the predictions of Christ confirm the won- 
ders recorded by these historians.”? And 
further; another sign predicted by our Lord 
was the persecution of Christians; and this 
we have recorded in the book of the Acts of 
the Apostles. Another was, the preaching 
of the Gospel throughout the world. This 
fact is also recorded in the Acts of the Apos- 
tles; and also by heathen historians. It is 
supposed, upon very good evidence, that the 
Apostle Paul visited England and Scotland, 
and preached the Gospel there. The Chris- 
tian fathers state that the ploughmen in the 
fields in every land were found singing the 
Psalms of David and the songs of the Gos- 
pel. Again; it was predicted by our Lord 
that Jerusalem should be besieged by the 
Roman armies. “Ye shall see the abomina- 
tion of desolation standing where it ought 
not ;”’ “the days shall come upon thee, that 
thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, 
and compass thee round, and keep thee in on 
every side.” “The abomination of desola- 
tion’? was the Roman army; and Jose- 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 151 


phus records, that those warriors brought the 
Roman standard, the eagle, into the midst of 
the temple and into the sacred place. A 
trench, says Josephus, was dug round about 
Jerusalem, and of it he gives a very minute 
and particular account. In the next place, 
Christ enjoined the Christians that should be 
in Jerusalem to “flee into the mountains,” 
and escape when they saw these things. And 
accordingly it is recorded that Cestius Gailus 
came against Jerusalem with a powerful 
army, with which he might have taken it; 
but, contrary to expectation, and without 
reason, removed away from it, and immedi- 
ately afterwards many of the principal Jewish 
people left the city, like a sinking ship; and 
afew years after, when Vespasian was draw- 
ing near Jerusalem, great multitudes ran and 
escaped for safety to the mountains and to 
Pella. Our Lord also predicted, that false 
Christs and false prophets should arise, and 
should show great signs and wonders, and 
this actually occurred. Moreover our Lord 
described the miseries that should befall the 
Jews at that time. He says—“ These are 
the days of vengeance ; woe unto them that 
are with child and to them that give suck in 
those days, for there shall be great distress in 


152 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


the land, and wrath upon this people, and 
they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and 
shall be led away captive into all nations.” 
Josephus says—“ All the calamities which 
have befallen any nation from the beginning 
of the world were but small in comparison 
with those which befell the Jews ; within the 
city, the fury was so great, that they filled 
the temple itself with continual slaughter ; 
nay, to such a height did their maduess rise, 
that they destroyed the granaries of corn 
which should have sustained them; all reve- 
rence to age and the ties of parent and child 
- were annihilated; children snatched the half- 
baked morsels which the fathers were eating 
out of their mouths, and mothers snatched 
the morsels from their children also, and the 
young men wandered about the market 
places like shadows, and fell down dead 
through hunger and famine.” At length 
the famine became so extreme, that they 
devoured what the most sordid animals re- 
fused. A woman of distinguished rank, in 
hunger and desperation, killed and roasted 
her own babe from her breast, and had eaten 
one half of it before the horrid deed was 
detected. Others fell by the edge of the 
sword. At Scythopolis and Cesarea above 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 153 


50,000 fell; at another gate 2,000 fell, at 
another gate 2,000 fell; at Ptolemais, 2,000; 
at Damascus 10,000; and Josephus records, 
that altogether, of different ages and sexes, 
1,357,630 Jews were destroyed and _ but- 
chered in various parts of Palestine and 
about Jerusalem. Lastly, our Lord predicted 
the total destruction of Jerusalem: “ Your 
house shall be left unto you desolate; there 
shall not be left one stone upon another, that 
shall not be thrown down; Jerusalem shall 
be trodden down of the Gentiles.” Now, 
Josephus states the leading facts of the fulfil- 
ment of this prophecy. Our Saviour’s words 
were literally fulfilled, even when royalty 
tried to prevent it. Titus was very desirous 
of preserving the temple; he had expressed 
the like desire of preserving the city too, and 
repeatedly sent Josephus the historian and 
other Jews to persuade them to surrender. 
The Jews themselves set fire to the gates, 
through which the Romans were endeavour- 
ing to force an entrance, and one of the sol- 
diers threw a burning brand into a window 
of the temple; the flames soon spread, and 
the people and the soldiers rushed to the 
spot, shouting and fighting. Titus hastened 
to the place, calling to the soldiers to quench 


154 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


the fire, but they either could not hear or 
would not hear, and those behind encouraged 
those before them to set other parts on fire. 
Titus then, supposing that the interior might 
yet be saved, ordered the crowd of soldiers 
to be beaten back; but their anger and their 
hatred of the Jews and a certain vehement ~ 
fury overcame their reverence for their com- 
mander, and one of them threw the fire 
within, where the flames then burst forth, 
and thus the whole temple was burnt down 
even contrary to the will of Cesar® as if not 
one jot or tittle of our Lord’s word should 
pass away, until all should be fulfilled. 

You have thus heard the prophecies of our 
Lord upon the one hand, and the fulfilment 
of them on the other—that fulfilment not 
recorded by a Christian, whose testimony 
might be suspected by the infidel, but by 
Josephus, a Jew, a distinguished general in 
the service of Titus and Vespasian, and one 
of the most impartial and honest historians 
that ever wrote at any period of time. We 
here see one that was the poor son of a car- 
penter, Jesus of Nazareth, without friends, 
without rank, without human learning, with- 
out aught of the advantages or accomplish- 
ments of the world, standing up in the sight 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 155 


of a most magnificent temple, a temple so 
vast that Alexander the Great, it is said, im- 
pressed with its magnificence, declared that it 
must he the residence of a god, and _ pro- 
claiming that in one generation, in thirty 
years, “not one stone should be left upon 
another,” and giving the minutiz of the 
onset, the siege, and the slaughter ; and after 
the interval of thirty years, all was literally 
and exactly fulfilled. Must He not either 
have been God, or have spoken under the 
direction of the purpose and foreknow- 
ledge of God? We established in a former 
chapter that the books are genuine and 
authentic; that is to say, that they were 
written by those whose names they bear, and 
that there has been no foisting of any one 
passage into the sacred books, which was not 
written by the sacred penman. It was one 
of our proofs of this, that after they were 
written they were translated into various 
languages, into Syriac and Latin, and quoted 
by the fathers; and never, let it be noted, 
has the charge been made, that these prophe- 
cles respecting Jerusalem were interpolated. 
If there had been the shadow of a pretence 
for it, the charge would have been reiterated 
a thousand times Ido then assert that the 


156 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


predictions of the prophets respecting our 
Lord, and the predictions of our Lord re- 
specting the desolation of once proud and 
glorious Jerusalem, have been so exactly and 
literally fulfilled, even by the testimony of 
disinterested parties, that there cannot bea 
shadow of doubt, that God’s finger is there, 
and that God’s sanction and seal lie upon the 
face of the sacred volume. 

Having looked at these prophecies, we 
may ask again which is the most credulous 
—the man who believes that all this was the 
mere random and fortuitous result of chance 
and sagacious conjecture? or the man who 
holds that all these predictions were penned 
by the inspiration of God? The infidel 
pretends to be a freethinker; he boasts, that 
while we are the mere slaves of education, 
mere credulous fanatics, he is a freethinker. 
He is not a freethinker; he is the victim of 
gross credulity. I claim to be myself a free- 
thinker; I think for myself, and read, and 
infer from evidence. The infidel, instead of 
being a freethinker, is a slave to his preju- 
dices and passions. 


“He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, 
And all are slaves beside.” 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 157 


In looking at the opposers of Christianity, 
after all, it is natural to ask, What are the 
attainments and what is the character of 
those men, who (especially in these days) 
make a parade of objections to the Scrip- 
tures? Are they the Newtons, the Keplers, 
the Stewarts, and the Lockes, and the Bacons 
of the world? Not at all; but men who 
have occasionally peeped through a tele- 
Scope, and then have learned to tell us that 
the stars contain no proof that there is a 
God; men who have once in their life looked 
through a microscope, and then come to tell 
us that its revelations are not proofs of Deity 
and design. Yet such are the men, that 
stand up with an effrontery unparalleled, 
and tell us that all evidence is useless, that 
all claims are inadmissible, that Robert 
Owen is a better man than the apostle Paul, 
and the filthy abominations of Socialism 
more worthy of the acceptance of sinners 
than the inspiration of the holy and blessed 
Jesus, A simple contrast between the writ- 
ings of the one and the writings of the other, 
between the men who lead the armies of in 
fidelity and those who are the advocates of 
our holy faith, will at once demonstrate 
which has God upon its side, and which 

14 


158 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


indicates the possession of the true knowledge 
of His will. 

There is still another decisive proof of the 
divinity of the Gospel, worthy of our atten- 
tion; viz. the character of Jesus Christ. 

Suppose that the history of Christ had 
been pressed upon our notice in the present 
day for the first time in our life. After we 
have read the characteristics of the age in 
which He lived, the expectations of His 
countrymen, the leading and popular theolo- 
gy of the day, we read minutely and study 
exactly the character of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. What do we find? We see a char- 
acter utterly unlike the age, entirely above 
and beyond it; evidently zm the world, but 
palpably not ef the world, nor in any respect 
the product of the world. We behold His 
countrymen, the Jews, looking for a tem- 
poral prince to sit upon a temporal throne, 
and to sway a literal sceptre; and we hear 
Christ telling them that all such expectations 
are absurd—that “the pure in heart shall 
see God,” that “the peace-makers shall be 
called the children of God,’ that “they that 
hunger and thirst after righteousness shall 
be filled.”?. In the midst of a nation, that 
believed that the Messiah should be restrict- 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED? 159 


ed wholly to themselves, that His blessings 
never should go beyond the hills of Carmel 
or the banks of the Jordan, we hear Christ 
stating, that all nations are ito taste of His 
goodness—that “God so loved the world, 
that He gave His only-begotten Son that 
whosoever believeth in Him should not per- 
ish, but have everlasting life.” We behold, 
also, in the character of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, no assumption of any circumstantial 
superiority to the rest of his countrymen. 
He was born of a lowly woman, brought up 
in the carpenter’s shop and by the carpen- 
ter’s knee, and educated probably at the 
village school. He walks with the rest of the 
striplings of His day, having no university 
education, having never sat at the feet ofa 
learned Rabbi, possessing no noble, or royal, 
or national patronage; and yet He promul- 
gates doctrines, that the mightiest masters 
among the prophets never even dreamed of. 
He prescribes precepts so pure and exalted, 
that the more they are analyzed and tested 
the more do men become impressed with 
their heavenly origin. He proclaims a faith 
that was to embrace all nations, and a king- 
dom “not meat and drink, but righteousness, 
and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”” We 


160 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


see in Christ nothing of the fanatic. Ifa fa- 
natic, and impostor, He would have availed 
Himself of the popular theology, and have 
turned the notions of the Jews to account— 
for this is the nearest way to rapid popu-. 
larity ; but instead of this, He contradicts all 
their notions, and sends His word like a 
ploughshare through their most beloved 
prejudices; every word He utters in the fifth 
of John is a death-blow to their heart-woven 
fancies. How was this character formed? 
Whence came this most awful, and yet mag- 
nificent specimen of “ whatsoever things are 
just, pure, true, lovely,” sublime? Whence 
his birth? Whence His origin? How will 
you account for this upon any other repre- 
sentations than those of the word of God? 
There is nothing of the impostor about him. 
A deceiver of the world, assuming to be some- 
thing, puts ona peculiar dress; he affects cer- 
tain eccentricities and oddities; he draws a line 
between him and the vulgar; runs into his 
palace, or his hall, or hovel, and assumes a 
mysterious dignity, a significant silence. But 
Christ puts on no such artificial assumptions. 
He wears the fisherman’s dress. He sits 
down at the table of Peter. He associates, 
for holy ends, with publicans and sinners. 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 161 


He reasons with them constantly, “here a 
little and there a little.””, When the rich men 
came and offered Him their riches, He re- 
fused them; when He might have made 
Himself a king, He would have nothing to 
do with a crown; and if we desire to behold 
the loveliness and glory of Christ’s charac- 
ter concentrated into one bright spot, it was 
upon that occasion when He took the 
smiling babes from the mothers’ breasts, and 
said, “ Suffer little children to come unto me, 
and forbid them not, for of such is the king- 
dom of heaven.”? How can we account for 
such a character at such a period, and among 
such a people, except upon the principles that 
are asserted in the sacred volume? Must 
we not conclude, in the words of unsophisti- 
cated nature, as poured through the centu- 
rion’s lips at the foot of the cross—“ Truly 
this was the Son of God?” 

There is one other fact, namely, the rapid 
progress of Christianity throughout the world, 
which is possessed of no little weight in this 
discussion. 

Here was a doctrine opposed to the preju- 
dices of men—in the very teeth of the popu- 
lar and prevailing morality. The very things 
which the Romans had baptized as virtues, 

14? 


162 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


Christianity denounced as vices. Here was 
a system, preached not by those who walked 
on the banks of the Ilissus, or by the academy, 
or by the pioud philosophers of the Stoa ; but 
by fishernen—by ministers, with two excep- 
tions, iltiterate, untaught, and unpolished, 
called the Apostles, It was a doctrine op- 
posed to men’s darling lusts, and to their 
dearest prejudices; propounded without elo- 
quence, and carried forward without patron- 
age. There was neither State connexion, nor 
crown to irradiate them, no throne to back 
them, nor magistracy to aid them. And yet 
this doctrine, opposed to men’s popular feel- 
ings, their prejudices, and their lusts, preach- 
ed by fishermen without eloquence, without 
countenance, without patronage, royal or 
noble, so rapidly spread and so widely pre- 
vailed, that the whole Roman empire came 
to be leavened with it; and at length the 
once degraded cross sparkled in the diadems 
of emperors; and the name of Christian came 
to be the ornament and the boast of grateful 
millions. How shall we account for so rapid 
a progress of so unpopular principles, preach- 
ed by so unlikely instruments ? 

Gibbon, the infidel, has tried, but most im- 
potently tried, to account for its spread, upon 


Is THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 168 


what he calls second causes, among which 
he mentions the “inflexible and intolerant 
zeal of the first Christians; derived (it is true) 
from the Jewish religion, but purified from 
the narrow and unsocial spirit, which instead 
of inviting the Gentiles, had deterred them.” 
But how was it intolerant? Did they use 
the faggot? Gibbon dare not say it. Did 
they have recourse to the sword? This was 
never charged. Wherein did the intolerance 
consist? It was in this; they would not 
eonsent that Christ should be enrolled as one 
of the Det minores in the Pantheon. They 
required that He should either have the whole 
temple or have none. What they asserted 
was, that Christianity is either absolute and 
all, or nothing ; that it must reign in supreme 
and absolute monarchy, or its ministers must 
die devoted martyrs. It is still the same; it 
will have no compromise ; it admits of none. 
But, says Gibbon, it spread by the inflexible 
zeal of its advocates; but how came it to be 
received at first? It spread by their zeal, it 
is true; but mere zeal will never perma- 
nently promote a religious system. Joanna 
Southcote had abundance of zeal; but what 
has been her success? Mere zeal never can 
permanently sustain a system, unless there 


164 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


be some portion of truth in it; still less can 
zeal invent a system that will hold together 
for any length of time. Gibbon’s next secon- 
dary cause of the progress of Christianity is 
—<“ The doctrine of a future life improved by 
every additional circumstance that can give 
efficacy and importance to it.” Now how 
would the doctrine of a future life promote a 
system among those who did not believe it? 
The Romans would say, when they heard 
the doctrine of a future life—«It is very wel- 
come, but what is the evidence of it??? The 
Apostles, therefore, must have stated evi- 
dence of the future life; else the fact itself or 
the creed that embosomed it could not have 
been received. His next cause is—* The 
supernatural gifts they possessed, which must 
have conduced to their own comfort, and the 
comfort of those around them.’”? Superna- 
tural gifts? Does the infidel admit that their 
gifts were supernatural? He did so because 
he could not do otherwise. If they were not 
supernatural, how could they conduce to 
“their own comfort?”’ If I am practising 
conscious imposture, that can never conduce 
to my comfort. But if the miracles had been 
mere pieces of legerdemain, the Greeks and 
Romans were too shrewd to be imposed upon 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 165 


by them. Another cause, he says, was the 
pure morality of those who preached these 
doctrines. And was it merely the pure and 
lofty morality of the teachers, that convinced 
the mind of the truth of their doctrines? 
How sublime must such morality be! An- 
other cause was “ their preaching repentance 
of past sins, and the laudable desire of sup- 
porting the honour of the cause in which they 
were engaged.”?’ Now how could this con- 
vert Pagans? Would it not repel them? 
One can see no connexion between the pre- 
mises and the conclusion; but the very re- 
verse. Surely the desire of supporting the 
honour of a society must imply that that 
society was founded on what is good; but 
how such preaching of repentance, and the 
desire of supporting the society with which 
they were connected, could convert infidels— 
is a deduction of inferences from premises, 
such as we cannot admit to be warranted by 
the ordinary laws of logic. 

The miraculous preservation of the Bible 
is no feeble proof of God being its author 
and protector. 

The ancient Greek and Latin classics, 
which minister to man’s lusts, and chime in 
with man’s fallen propensities, have all of 


166 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


them been more or less mutilated or lost. 
But the Bible, which rebukes man in truth’s 
own undaunted tones, which man hates be- 
cause it “prophesies evil concerning him,” 
if he continue in his sins, remains perfectly 
whole and entire. Now how does it happen, 
that the books which men cherished with 
parental solicitude are mutilated or lost, and 
that the book which men would have been 
generally too glad to have exterminated and 
destroyed is perfectly preserved? Were a 
man to come into an assembly in 1847, who 
had survived eighteen centuries of persecu- 
tion, who had been cast into the seas, but 
was not drowned, who had been thrown into 
the fires, but was not burned, who had been 
flung to wild beasts, but was not destroyed, 
to whom prussic acid had been administered, 
but he had not died, who had been buried, 
and yet was not smothered; would you not 
say, God must have sustained this man by a 
continuous miracle? My dear reader, Tuts 
BOOK IS THAT MAN. The power of kings, 
the pride of nobles, the prejudices of priests, 
whatever learning could snatch from the 
arsenals of the past, or wit invent, or wicked- 
ness wield, have been hurled against it, and 
all have recoiled broken, and lie as trophies 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 167 


at its feet. As soon may the cawing of the 
sea-bird uproot the rocks of the sea, or a 
swarm of wasps overturn the oak, as any 
assaults overthrow Christianity. 


“Truth crushed to earth will rise again, 
The eternal years of God are hers ; 
But Error wounded writhes with pain, 
And dies amid her worshippers,” 


It has been buried in the floods, and it is not 
lost; it has been thrown into the fires, yet it 
is not burned; it has been exposed to the 
pestilential notes of a corrupt and supersti- 
tious faith, and yet it is not poisoned; and 
now, in the nineteenth century, does it come 
forth from all the opposition and the per- 
secution of eighteen centuries, to which it 
has been subjected, in all its primitive in- 
tegrity—as virgin gold cast into the furnace, 
more bright and beautiful by far than when 
it entered, 

But perhaps after all the evidences we 
have adduced, the most satisfactory is that 
contained in the words—“ Come and see, and 
taste ;” that is, the experimental evidence. 

If we can only bring men to make trial of 
the Gospel, they will soon feel its Divine 
original. If we visit the hills and valleys, 


168 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


the glens and grey moors of Scotland, and 
enter any of the cottages of her people, and 
ask the pariarch of the village, “« How came 
you to the belief that that book called the 
Bible is the book of God? You never read 
the Evidences of a Paley, or the Analogy of 
a Butler, you never studied the Credibility of 
a Lardner, you never followed the eloquent 
demonstrations of a Chalmers; how came 
you to believe it???“ Come to believe it !” 
would the peasant say ; “I have /edé it in my 
heart and conscience to be the book of God; 
it has taught me truths I never knew before, 
it has given me a peace the world could not 
give, it has calmed my beating heart, it has 
stanched my bleeding wounds when the 
world was all bitterness and Marah, it has 
made all things new. Not the book of God? 
I have felt its power and tasted its sweet- 
ness; I am as convinced of it, as that Iam 
here a living, breathing man.” 

To give in one illustration a summary of 
all thisevidence. Suppose that an individual, 
long an invalid, hasbeen restored to perfect 
health and strength by means of a tonic pre- 
scribed by some physician; and that tonic 
port wine. A visitor comes to this recovered 
man, and says, “It is not port wine that you 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 169 


have been taking, it has been water from the 
ditch.” What would be his probable reply ? 
He might justly say, “I will convince you 
from three distinct sources, that what I am 
taking is port wine.” First, he brings the 
Wine merchant; and the wine merchant 
states, that he saw the grapes in the vine- 
yard, he saw them prepared in the wine 
press, the wine put into the cask, drawn off 
into bottles, and placed in the chamber of 
the invalid. That is external evidence. He 
next calls the chemist; and the chemist says, 
he has subjected the wine to the usual and 
appropriate tests, and he is sure it is port 
wine. That is internal evidence. But the 
third witness is himself; and he says—«I 
can add the experimental to these evidences ; 
I was reduced to the verge of the grave by 
debility, and this has raised me up, renewed 
my vigour, imparted strength to my consti- 
tution. Iam persuaded that it is not water, 
but an efficacious tonic that I have taken.’’ 
So can many say of the Gospel. The ex- 
ternal and internal evidences are important ; 
but I must say, the most triumphant evi- 
dence is when one can declare—“« The book 
must be the book of God, for I the widow 
have found in it a glorious Husband, I the 
15 


170 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


orphan have found in it an everlasting 
Father, I the broken-hearted have found in 
it a healing balm, I the guilty have found in 
it forgiveness, I the distracted have found in 
it peace, I the pilgrim and the stranger have 
found in ita lamp to my feet, and a light to 
my path. Thy word, O God, is truth.’ Can 
a lie regenerate souls ? 

Suffer me now to conclude by setting 
before you two creeds, that have been pro- 
mulgated and preached among mankind. 

The first is The creed of the infidel :— 

“J believe that there is no God, but that 
matter is God, and God is matter; and that 
it is no matter whether there is any God or 
not. I believe also that the world was not 
made, -but that the world made itself, or that 
it had no beginning, and that it will last for 
ever. I believe that man is a beast; that 
the soul is the body, and that the body is the 
soul; and that after death there is neither 
body nor soul. I believe that there is no 
religion, that natural religion is the only 
religion, and all religion unnatural. I be- 
lieve not in Moses; I believe in the first 
philosophers. I believe not in the evange- 
lists; I believe in Chubb, Collins, Toland, 
Tindal, Hobbes. I believe in Lord Boling- 


IS THE BIBLE INSPIRED ? 17} 


broke, and I believe not in St. Paul. I be- 
lieve not in revelation; I believe in tra- 
dition. I believe in the Talmud; I believe 
in the Koran; I believe not in the Bible. I 
believe in Socrates; I believe in Confucius; I 
believe in Mahomet; I believe not in Christ. 
And lastly, I believe in all unbelief.”’ 

Listen in the next place to the other creed, 
human in its composition, but divine in its 
substantial truths, as recorded in a simple 
document of great antiquity :— 

“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, 
Maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus 
Christ, His only Son, our Lord; who was 
conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the 
Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, 
was crucified, dead, and buried; He de- 
scended into hell; the third day he rose 
again from the dead; He ascended into 
heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God, 
the Father Almighty; from thence He shall 
come to judge the quick and the dead. I 
believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic 
Church, the communion of saints, the for- 
giveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, 
and the life everlasting.” 

Which indicates the truth of God? Weigh 
the one, all contradictions and absurdities— 


172 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


weigh the other, all sublimity and truth— 
and you will address the believer in the 
latter, expressing your feelings in the lan- 
guage of one of old, “« Where thou lodgest I 
will lodge, where thou goest I will go; thy 
people shall be my people, and thy God my 
God.” 


CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BIBLE. 173 


CHAPTER VII. 


GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BIBLE, 


Tue history of the Bible is the history of a 
perpetual miracle. It is legible in the light 
it has diffused; we can trace its effects and 
measure its progress by the blessings it has 
deposited. A river springs up in a remote 
and uncultivated desert; its fountain a hill; 
its source the skies; it rolls onward, and 
makes its channel a belt of verdure, and 
every acre it touches it transforms into an 
Eden, and every cottage in its course it fills 
with contentment, and every palace with 
wealth. 

Such is the progress of the Bible. Those 
hospitals for the sick are depositions from its 
waters ; those merciful laws are the creations 
of its power; that lofty civilization is the 
golden sand that, more glorious than Pacto- 
lus, it has taken from the Rock of ages, and 
strewn as it swept along. It has entered 
into all conflicts, and come forth refreshed 
and radiant with terrible beauty. It has 
spoken to fierce disputants, and breathed 

15* 


174 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


into them a new spirit, and imparted a new 
colouring to their debates. It has found ac- 
cess to the cottage of the peasant and to the 
palace of the king. Its holy words brighten 
our joys and assuage our sorrows. It is the 
light to our feet and the lamp to our path ; 
the guide of the erring, the hope of the good, 
the joy of the just. 

Its first and primary description is a reve- 
lation of and from God. ‘Truths veiled are 
by it disclosed, and truths too remote to be 
seen by human eye are brought within the 
horizon of our view. It is the only likeness 
of God on earth, and yet may not be wor- 
shipped. It shows us God just while he jus- 
tifies the guilty that believe in Jesus—mercy 
pardoning; holiness acquitting ; sin punished, 
and the sinner saved. We feel conscious of 
sin, and fearful of merited judgment and 
death. No hand seems able to help; no 
door of deliverance appears to open. In 
this paralysis of hope we hear sounding from 
the throne of God, “If any man sin, we have 
an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ 
the righteous, and He is the propitiation for 
our sins, and not for ours only, but for the 
sins of the whole world.” 

The Bible is inspired. This is a precious 


CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BIBLE. 175 


attribute. All scripture is given by inspira- 
tion of God.” “Holy men of old spake as 
they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” 
This gives us confidence in its disclosures, 
and hope in its prospects; we read it as the 
very word of God; the true and faithful ex- 
ponent of His will and of our obligations. It 
is because it is so, that we can lean on the 
Omnipotence we cannot measure, and trust 
the Wisdom we cannot comprehend. 

It is written. This is no ordinary ground 
of gratitude. Had the inspired truths of 
Christianity been left to the transmission of 
oral tradition, they had perished from our 
earth long before they had reached us. The 
perverting tendency of tradition is not only 
traceable in history, but revealed in Scrip- 
ture—John xxi. 21—« Peter seeing him, saith 
to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? 
Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry 
till I come, what is that to thee? Follow 
thou me. Then went this saying abroad,’ 
this is the oral tradition, “among the breth- 
ren, that that disciple should not die; yet 
Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die, 
but if I will that he tarry till I come, what is 
that to thee?’’? Thus the written Scripture 
corrects the unwritten tradition. No such 


176 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


calamity can befall the inspired truth of God. 
They are in the shape of an indestructible 
stereotype, an immutable fixture—proof alike 
against the attacks of open foes, and the cor- 
ruptions of pretended friends, 

The comments may vary, like the clouds 
of the sky—the truths remain, like the stars, 
fixed for ever. 

The Bible is translated. Written origi- 
nally in Hebrew and Greek, it is now trans- 
lated into almost every language under hea- 
ven. It was translated into English by Tyn- 
dal in 1530, by Coverdale in 1535, by Cran- 
mer in 1539; at Geneva in 1560; by the 
bishops in 1568; and by the accomplished 
translators of our common and authorized 
version in 1611. It isa translation of match- 
less faithfulness and beauty, with few im- 
perfections, and these of no vital impor- 
tance. 

The Bible is also inspired truth in the 
varied forms of human speech, It is the 
varied strain on one key-note ; it is God speak- 
ing, not in the language of a sect, but of all 
humanity. It is variety to prevent monotony, 
and unity to prevent discord. Like the over- 
shadowing cherubim, the Old and New Tes- 
tament look at the same propitiatory; and, 


CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BIBLE. 177 


like the lips of an oracle, give utterance to 
the same blessed truths. 

The Bible is a plain and intelligible book. 
True it is not without mysteries, incompre- 
hensible, because revelations of the Infinite, 
and thus transcending the reach of finite 
minds. Great truths, like very high moun- 
tains, cast around them on earth very broad 
shadows. But the saving truths of Chris- 
tianity, that is, those which are essential to 
the salvation of sinners—the nature and 
effects of sin—the atonement—justification— 
sanctification—privilege and duty are fully 
and plainly revealed. 

The people are invited and commanded to 
read it. For them specially was it written ; 
and for them it is preserved. “These words 
which I command thee this day, shall be in 
thy heart. And thou shalt teach them dili- 
gently unto thy children, and shalt talk of 
them when thou sittest in thine house, and 
when thou walkest by the way, and when 
thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” 
(Deut. vi. 6.) “Search the Scriptures, for in 
them ye think ye have eternal life, and these 
are they which testify of me.’? (John v. 39.) 

The prime minister of Candace read the 
Scriptures on his journey, and an evangelist 


178 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


was sent to help him in understanding them. 
The Bereans searched the Scriptures, whether 
these things were so, and ‘therefore many 
of them believed.” Timothy had “known 
the Scriptures from a child.” 

“It is written,’ is the perfect standard; 
“To the law and to the testimony,” the final 
appeal. Jesus so honoured his own written 
word, that he preferred to quote from its 
pages solutions of intricate questions to emit- 
ting replies from the depths of his own infi- 
nite mind. History may tell us of the fall 
of kingdoms, and the erection of dynasties, 
but it is silent on the introduction of sin, and 
the provision of a Saviour. Geography de- 
scribes isles, and continents, and rivers, and 
seas; but it has no map of Eden, and no 
chart of the way thither. Astronomy speaks 
of suns, and stars, and systems; but it is 
silent on the Sun of Righteousness. Geology 
reveals strange petrifactions, and fossils, and 
rocks, and precious stones; but it excavates 
not the pearl of great price. Botany describes 
the hyssop out of the wall, and the cedar 
that crowns Mount Lebanon; but not the 
Tree of Life. 

These are all beautiful and useful in their 
place, but they must neither supersede nor 


CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BIBLE. 179 


be a substitute for the word of God. Before 
its majesty science must bow, councils fall, 
and fathers veil their heads, One text from 
one Apostle outweighs all the opinions and 
traditions of Christendom. 

Every part of this blessed book is inlaid 
with Christ. 

The historical part is the record of the 
scaffolding that preceded his advent, and of 
the fabric that was carried on after his resur- 
rection. 

The prophetic part gives testimony to 
Jesus—Moses to His advent—David to his 
royalty—Isaiah to His priesthood—Micah to 
His birth-place—and the Apocalypse to His 
future glory, when His head shall wear many 
crowns. “To Him gave all the prophets 
Witness.” 

The promissory part of Scripture is full 
of Christ. The whole spiritual firmament 
glows with promises, as with stars of varied 
magnitude, but of enduring fixity. All their 
force, and beauty, and sweetness, are from 
Him. “In Him all the promises are yea 
and amen.”’ 

The ceremonial part derives all its mean- 
ing and consistency from Him, He is the 
high priest, and the refuge, and the temple 


180 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


the living water and the true bread, and the 
rock of ages. He is the body, and these are 
the figures. He is the truth, and these the 
types. He is the substance, and these the 
shadows. 

The doctrinal part of Scripture is full of 
Christ. His righteousness, His sacrifice, His 
intercession, are among the leading and dis- 
tinguishing truths of Christianity. Of all the 
doctrines of the Gospel, it may be said, “ He 
is all and in all.”? Heis the Lord our right- 
eousness, the Lord our peace, the Lord our 
healer—the alpha and omega, the first and 
the last. | 

The practical part is also replete with 
Christ. He has “left us an example.” His 
commandments are not grievous. His yoke 
is'easy. His love is the inspiring motive, and 
His law the regulating directory. Thus the 
whole of Scripture is eloquent with the testi- 
mony of Jesus. | 

Let us then read the Bible as the very 
word of God; let us approach it with solemn 
and reverential feelings; let us read as if we 
looked upon the glory between the cherubim, 
or walked upon the floor of the Holy of 
Holies. We need the Holy Spirit to help us 
to understand it—not to alter, add to, or im- 


CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BIBLE. 181 


prove the Bible, but to purify and enlighten 
the minds of those that read it. We need an 
“unction ”’ from on high—a spiritual mind— 
a pure heart. For all this God will be in- 
quired of. 

We must not read in order to establish a 
theory, but in order to discover truth. We 
may not read one series of texts to the ex- 
clusion of another. We must come as wil- 
ling learners — obedient disciples — anxious 
only to hear God speak, and to obey what 
he enjoins. We must read doctrinal and 
practical parts with equal and unswerving 
impartiality. For this we need, and for this 
we must seek the Holy Spirit of God. How 
precious, then, is the Bible! It isa lamp to 
our feet, and a light to our path. It discloses 
the everlasting Husband—the eternal Father 
—the destiny of the soul—the hopes of glory. 
What ancient philosophers could not reach, 
children, through it, can now learn. Hu- 
manity is like a ship that has broken its 
cable, and is drifting in unknown seas; and 
the Bible is its only chart that can guide it to 
a haven. 

Great gift of God to mankind !—it re- 
kindles in the heart extinguished love, and 
relights the lamp of life, and restores the sab- 

16 


182 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


bath of the soul. To the grandeur of the 
wan it adds the glory of the saint. It over 
arches the dreary caverns of despair with the 
bow of promise; it sets duties in the bosom 
of benedictions, and precepts in promises; it 
offers pardon for the greatest sin, and gives 
dignity to the humblest duty. Well did Sir 
William Jones write--“I have regularly and 
attentively read the Bible, and am of opinion 
that this volume, independently of its divine 
origin, contains more true sublimity, more 
exquisite beauty, purer morality, more im- 
partial history, and finer strains of poetry 
and eloquence, than could be collected within 
the same compass from all other books ever 
composed in any age.” 

«The fairest productions of human wit,” 
writes Bishop Horne, “after a few perusals, 
like gathered flowers, wither in our hands, 
and lose their fragrancy ; but these unfading 
plants of Paradise become, as we are accus- 
tomed to them, still more and more beauti- 
ful ; their bloom appears to be doubly height- 
ened, fresh odours are emitted, and new 
sweets extracted from them. He who hath 
once tasted their excellences will desire to 
taste them yet again ; and he who tastes them 
oftenest will relish them best.’”’ 


CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BIBLE. 183 


Even Rousseau made the remarkable ob- 
servation :—“I will confess to you further, 
that the majesty of the Scripture strikes me 
with admiration as the purity of the gospel 
has its influence on my heart. Peruse the 
works of our philosophers, with all their 
pomp of diction—how mean, how con- 
temptible are they, when compared with 
Scripture! Is it possible that a book, at once 
so simple and sublime, should be merely the 
work of man? Is it possible that the sacred 
person, whose history it contains, should be 
himself a mere man? What purity, what 
sweetness in his manner! What an affect- 
ing grace in his delivery! What sublimity 
in his maxims! What profound wisdom in 
his discourses! What presence of mind! 
What truth in his replies! Where is the 
man—where the philosopher—who could so 
live and die, without weakness, and without 
ostentation? Shall we suppose the evan- 
gelic history a mere fiction? Indeed, my 
friend, it bears not the marks of fiction. On 
the contrary, the history of Socrates, which 
nobody presumes to doubt, is not so well 
attested as that of Jesus Christ. The Jewish 
authors were incapable of the diction, and 
strangers to the morality contained in the 


184 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


gospels; the marks of whose truths are so 
striking and invincible, that the inventor 
would be a more astonishing character than 
the hero.’’* 

In every respect the Bible is a wonderful 
book. The impress of divinity is on all its 
pages; every event is seen by its light linked 
to God; its every doctrine tends to glorify 
Him; and every precept to bless His crea- 
tures. There is no trace of flattery of the 
reader, nor vanity in the writers; no anxiety 
to do justice to any fact by colouring it, or to 
explain any circumstance that seems incon- 
sistent. They wrote as those that felt they 
were the amanuenses of God—the sworn 
witnesses to facts. They concealed nothing 
from fear—palliated nothing through shame. 
Human nature, by the lips of the creature, 
proclaimed the sufferer on the cross to be the 
Son of God. Infidels, from Julian and Por- 
phyry to Paine and Rousseau, have let out 
admissions that might be advantageously 
collected, that the Bible is the book of God. 


* Rousseau’s Works, vol. v. p. 215. 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 185 


CHAPTER VIII, 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY OR INCONSISTENT ? 


Berore entering on alleged doctrinal and 
historical objections, I would reply to a state- 
ment often adduced, not so much by the Tn- 
fidel as by the Romanist, viz.—That we are 
not possessed of the whole Bible; that there 
are certain books, especially some connected 
with the Old Testament, which ought to be 
enrolled in the sacred canon, and which are 
now wanting. These books are commonly 
called the Apocrypha. What the Roman 
Catholic alleges is, that we Protestants are 
really destitute of a complete Bible; a hint 
on which the Infidel has frequently laid hold, 
in order to show that Christians,even among 
themselves, are not agreed as to what is 
Scripture and what is not. 

There are reasons, the most decisive and 
satisfactory, for believing that what is called 
the Apocrypha never was intended to bea 
part of the sacred volume—was not inspired 
of God—and is justly rejected from the sacred 
canon. This is an important subject, for 
some of the objections _ which have been 

16 


186 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


adduced against the claims of the Scriptures 
to be the book of God have been deduced 
from books which we Protestants universally 
disclaim, as any portion of the revealed will 
of God. 

The Apocrypha, so called from a word 
which means Hid—The hidden books— 
books not read and perused publicly in the 
congregations of Israel—was never written 
in the Hebrew tongue, in which all the rest 
of the Old Testament was written. It was 
never received or admitted by the Jews, to 
whom were divinely entrusted the Oracles 
of God; it is not once quoted by our Lord, 
nor by any of the apostles, as a portion of 
the sacred volume. Josephus, the celebrated 
Jewish historian, who ought to know what 
books were recognized by his countrymen 
and co-religionists, disclaims the Apocrypha 
as part of the Old Testament Scriptures, 
The Apocrypha was not recognised by any 
of the ancient Christian fathers, who are 
looked up to as being valuable historians, 
however imperfect expositors of Divine truth. 
I have in my possession the catalogues of the 
Sacred Scriptures, or canon, as recorded by 
the ancient fathers of the Christian church. 
Athanasius, who lived in the year 340, 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 187 


rejects the whole of the Apocrypha, except 
one book, which he thinks may be inspired, 
called the Book of Baruch. Hilary, who 
lived in the year 354, rejects all the Apocry- 
pha, Epiphanius, who lived in the year 
368, rejects it all. The fathers in the council 
of Laodicea, a. p. 367, reject all the Apocry- 
pha. Gregory of Nazianzum, who lived in 
370, rejects all. Amphilochius, who lived in 
370, also rejects all. Jerome, who lived in 
392, rejects it all. And lastly, Gregory the 
Great, who is asserted by Romanists to have 
been the first Pope, and who lived in 590, 
rejects the two books of Maccabees, which 
are at this day received by the Roman 
Catholic church, and in this presents a useful 
specimen of Papal harmony. But we have 
decisive evidence that the Maccabees at least 
is not part of the word of God, from the 
simple fact, that the writer disclaims all pre- 
tension to inspiration whatever. At the end 
of the second book of Maccabees, which is 
received by the Church of Rome as part of 
the Sacred Scriptures, it is stated—* So these 
things being by Nicanor, &c., I also will here 
make an end of my narrative, which if I 
have done well, it is what I desired; but if 
not so perfectly, it must be pardoned me.” 


188 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 


Can we conceive of an inspired penman beg- 
ging pardon for the mistakes of his narrative ? 
We find no parallel apology in the rest of 
sacred writ; and this very closing statement 
of the writer of the books of Maccabees, 
would be sufficient to disprove all claim or 
pretence to inspiration on his part. Jn the 
last place, the Apocrypha contains doctrines 
totally destructive of morality. For instance, 
in the second book of Maccabees (xiv. 42,) 
we read thus—“ Now as the multitude sought 
to rush into his house, and to break open the 
door, and to set fire to it, when he was ready 
to be taken he struck-himself with his sword, 
choosing ¢o die nobly rather than to fall into 
the hands of the wicked, and to suffer abuses 
unbecoming his noble birth.”’ In these words 
there is a distinct eulogium upon suicide; it 
is declared, that the man who rushed unbid- 
den and unsent into the presence of his God, 
«died nobly.” ‘To such morality as this, we 
find no parallel or counterpart in the rest of 
the sacred volume. And in the same second 
book of Maccabees, we read that “it isa 
holy and wholesome thought to pray for the 
dead, that they may be loosed from their 
sins.”? In other portions of the Apocrypha, 
especially in the book of Tobit, which has 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY ? 189 


been received as inspired, it is written «that 
to depart from injustice is to offer a propitia- 
tory sacrifice for injustice, and is the obtain- 
ing of pardon for sins.’? These and other 
doctrines that might be quoted from the 
Apocrypha contradict the plain doctrines of 
Scripture, and show distinctly that these 
books are not to be confounded or identified 
with the sacred volume; and that, whatever 
objections may lie against the morality of the 
Apocrypha, these do not militate one jot or 
tittle against the morality of what is really 
the word of God. 

Some may be disposed to ask—“ Does not 
the Church of England receive the Apocry- 
pha?’? That church does not receive it as 
sacred Scripture. She expressly states, that 
parts of the Apocrypha may be read only as 
containing moral lessons, but that no doc- 
trine is to be proved thereby: in other words, 
that the Apocrypha is not inspired, though 
portions of it, of which some are good, may 
be read, just as one of her homilies may be 
read, to the congregation. This is decisive 
as to the opinion of that church on the non- 
inspiration of the Apocryphal books. Per- 
haps, however, it is to be regretted that the 
Apocrypha should be bound up with Holy 


190 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


Scripture at all. I have been also told by 
ministers of the Church of England, that 
when a lesson in the Apocrypha does occur, 
they are at perfect liberty to read instead of 
it a portion of inspired and sacred writ. 
Having thus cleared the way so far as to 
be able to see what is the sacred volume, the 
next statement to which I proceed is, that 
we are charged—and charged by two oppo- 
site extremes, first by the Socinian, and next 
by the Roman Catholic—with having a false 
and inaccurate translation of Holy Writ. 
These two systems are both opposed to the 
truth. Socinianism is a system bereft of very 
much that is divine; Romanism is a system 
corrupted by very much that is human: 
both are equally opposed to “the truth as it 
is:in Jesus.”? But if we compare the trans- 
lation of the Scriptures made in the year 
1611, that is, cur authorized version, with 
the version of the Socinians, or rather, the mu- 
tilated document put forth by them as a ver- 
sion, and on the other hand with the Roman 
Catholic version, we shall find, that though 
our translation might be improved, were it 
revised, yet when all the improvements have 
been introduced, they will only tell more 
triumphantly in favour of the Deity of Christ, 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 19] 


the personality of the Holy Spirit, and the 
way of a sinner’s acceptance freely through 
the blood and atonement of the Lord Jesus, 
To give a specimen of this. In the book 
of Jeremiah (xvii. 9) we find these words, 
according to our authorized version—“ The 
heart is deceitful above all things, and des- 
perately wicked ; who can know it 2”? Both 
the Socinian and the Romanist oppose this 
translation, and say it is far too strong; and 
{ was quietly told, in a recent controversy 
for “the faith once delivered to the saints,”’ 
that we Protestants had wilfully and wick- 
edly mistranslated this verse, in order to 
make out the gloomy dogma of Calvinism, 
called the total corruption of human nature. 
The Roman Catholic version of the Scrip- 
tures has this translation—“ The heart is per- 
verse above all things, and unsearchable; 
who can know it?” the expression “un- 
searchable,” being meant to apply to its in- 
tellectual, and not to its moral condition; 
and the individual, who called my attention 
to it, said that our translation was wilfully 
corrupted into “ desperately wicked,” for the 
mere purpose just mentioned. Now, in order 
to ascertain which version is correct, I applied 
to the Lexicon of Gesenius—the most distin- 


192 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


guished Hebrew lexicographer of this or any 
other age, one also who is a Rationalist or 
Neologian, and therefore not at all biassed 
in favour of Calvinism. This eminent lexi- 
cographer translates the Hebrew word—* so 
malignant as to be incurable.’’ If his trans- 
Jation be right, (and he speaks purely asa 
linguist and a critic, and not asa theologian,) 
our version is hardly strong enough. It ought 
to be—“The heart is deceitful above all 
things, and so malignant as to be utterly in- 
curable by human art.’”’? But if we refer to 
the Church of Rome herself, we find her 
agreeing in our translation of this very word, 
where she does not think any dogma of hers 
is concerned. In this same book of Jere- 
miah, (xv. 18,) there being no theological 
motive to the contrary, she has translated the 
word as she ought—“ Why is my sorrow be- 
come perpetual, and my wound desperate so 
as to refuse to be healed 2”? There she trans- 
lates the word substantially the same as we 
do; but when she has to deal with a doc- 
trinal point, she perverts the word, and in 
order to get rid of the doctrine that man’s 
heart is desperately wicked, she softens and 
explains the phrase, so as to make it mean 
nothing at all. 1 might go over the whole 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 193 


version, and show that when we compare 
our translation with the Roman Catholic or 
the Socinian, we shall find our own, in almost 
every instance, triumphantly correct. Let us 
take another instance from the Gospel of 
John, in the Douay version, (ii. 4,) where our 
Lord, when about'to transform the water 
into wine, says to his mother, “ Woman, 
what have I to do with thee??? The Church 
of Rome felt this a sort of repulse to the 
homage that she yields to the Virgin Mary, 
and therefore translated it, “ What is it to me 
and to thee ??,—-which makes nonsense, and 
cannot be interpreted to mean either worship 
or repulse, or any thing at all. But in the 
Gospel of Mark (v. 7) the Church of Rome 
translates the very same Greek words, 7 éuoi 
xai ca, “ What have 1 to do with thee?’’ 
Where no dogma of our faith is concerned, 
she translates them exactly as we do; where 
a dogma zs concerned, she mistranslates and 
perverts the meaning of God’s word. 

I admit, that our version is susceptible of 
improvement; but of sucha nature, that if 
all the words in our translation which might 
be changed, were translated exactly as the 
original warrants, those great truths which 


are embodied in the standards of the Pro- 
1 


194 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


testant churches, and which are proclaimed 
from every evangelical pulpit, would shine 
forth in yet more glorious and beautiful relief. 
Let me give another instance or two. In 
Paul’s Epistle to Titus (ii. 13) we find these 
words: “ Looking for that blessed hope, and 
the glorious appearing of the great God and 
our Saviour Jesus Christ.” From reading 
these words we might suppose the meaning 
to be: “ Looking for the glorious appearing 
of the great God,’’ (that is, God the Father,) 
sand,’ secondly, ‘of our Saviour Jesus 
Christ; but the literal translation of the 
verse, as any classical scholar well knows, is 
this: “ Looking for that blessed hope, and 
the glorious appearing of Jesus Curisr, ouR 
GREAT Gop anp Saviour.’’ Again; in the 
Second Epistle of Peter (i. 1) we find these 
words: “Simon Peter, a servant and an 
apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have 
obtained like precious faith with us, through 
the righteousness of God and our Saviour 
Jesus Christ.” From reading these words, 
one would likewise suppose allusion to be 
made to God the Father and to God the Son; 
but the literal translation is, “through the 
righteousness of Jesus Christ, our God and 
Saviour.’ Along with these two, there are 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 195 


other four passages to which I might refer, 
did space permit—(namely, Eph. v. 5; 2 
Thess. i. 12; 1 Tim. v. 21; and Jude 4)—in 
all of which we find the very same phrase- 
ology mistranslated in our version, as if two 
persons of the Trinity were meant; but when 
corrected according to exact and accurate 
criticism, we have in these six passages most 
decided and intelligible proof of the essential 
Deity and Godhead of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ. 

I may show, by reference to two or three 
specimens of a different class, what would be 
the result of such alterations of our author- 
ized translation as would render it more 
minutely literal. In the Gospel of John 
(i. 14) it is said, that our Lord “was made 
flesh, and dwelt among us.” ‘The literal 
translation is, “dwelt as in a tent among us ;” 
walked and lived among us as in a movable 
tabernacle, into which He had come for a 
season. Again; in the Gospel of Matthew 
(ix. 36) we read that our Lord “ was moved 
with compassion.” The literal translation of 
that is: “ All his bowels were agitated and 
trembled with sympathy and compassion.’’ 
Theancients believed the bowels to be the seat 
of sympathy, or mercy. The Greek word 


196 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


used there to denote compassion is the most 
expressive that human language is capable 
of employing, insomuch that our version 
utterly fails to convey the vastness and ful- 
ness of the meaning of the original. Again; 


in the Epistle to the Hebrews (iv. 1) our © 


translation is, “All things are naked and 
open unto the eyes of Him with whom we 
have to do.”? The Greek word here is taken 
from the practices that accompanied the offer- 
ing of animals in sacrifices. It is said, that 
in ancient nations, when the animal that 
was to be sacrificed had been killed, the 
priest examined minutely all its entrails and 
bowels, and watched certain spots or symp- 
toms, from which he augured success or 
misfortune in the enterprise in which the 
offerer was embarked; and therefore the 
apostle says, that all things are as clearly 
noted by God, as the entrails of the victim 
were laid bare and examined by the priest. 
In the First Epistle to the Corinthians (iv. 13) 
the apostle says, “ We are made as the. filth 
of the world, and are the offscouring of all 
things, unto this day.” The word in the 
original here is amazingly expressive. When 
a victim was slain for sacrifice, all the parts 
that were not fit to be offered on the altar 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 197 


were swept away from the floor of the tem- 
ple, and cast out as pollution, and unfit to 
remain in the temple. Now says the apostle, 
“We are exactly like these parts of the sac- 
rifice, which are cut off and cast away, and 
treated as unfit to be either dedicated to God, 
or employed in the service of man ;”’ a most 
expressive phrase, to denote the utter con- 
tempt in which the world held the apostles. 
In the Epistle to the Ephesians, again (v. 27) 
we read—“ That He might present it to Him- 
self, a glorious church, not having spot or 
wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should 
be holy, and without blemish.”’ The Greek 
word there is derived from the name of one 
of the heathen gods, Momus, who was sup- 
posed to be the god of laughter; and the 
apostle’s assertion is, that we are to be pre- 
sented so spotless, that one disposed te 
ridicule would be unable to detect cause ot 
derision or scorn in us. 

Now what is the result of these altera- 
tions? Not that the doctrines we preach aro 
impugned, not that the theology we hear 
from every evangelical pulpit is affected ; 
but that the great truths of Christianity are 
brought forth in more brilliant and promi- 
nent glare. 

pe ii 


198 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


Let us now turn our attention to some of 
the objections that have been urged against 
certain statements, doctrines, and declarations 
in the word of God. 

The first which I shall mention, is the 
curse pronounced upon the serpent. Many 
infidels have said—“< Does it not seem a sort 
of paltry revenge on the part of God, to 
have cursed the serpent when he pronounced 
acurse upon guilty and offending man ? 
Why punish the irresponsible? Now our 
reply to this is: Do we not find the very 
same fact occur in creation and in provi- 
dence? The ocean engulfs the mother and the 
helpless babe without distinction. The earth- 
quake overturns churches as well as theatres; 
and saints and sinners perish in the catastro- 
phe. The objection of the infidel is, that it 
was unjust in God to make the dumb crea- 
ture suffer in consequence of the guilt of 
man; but if this be an argument against the 
God of revelation, will it not tell with equal 
strength against the God of creation? Sup- 
pose an incendiary sets fire to a stable, and 
ten or twenty horses are destroyed, is not 
the rery same apparent injustice suffered to 
take place in the providence of God? Sup- 
pose a war begins between two nations, and 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 199 


the noble horse is destroyed in battle; do we 
not see the brutes there suffering in conse- 
quence of man’s passion and revenge? Why 
has not a benevolent Being so arranged what 
Infinite Wisdom could have arranged, that 
man’s evil passions should not go beyond 
the bosom of the sinner, and that innocence 
Should be impervious to injury from guilt? 
It is thus that creation, providence, and reve- 
lation all coincide, and indicate a common 
parentage. If, then, it be an argument against 
the Bible being a revelation from God, that 
it states the brutes to have been sentenced to 
suffer in consequence of man’s apostasy, it 
must be an argument against the creation 
being the work of God, that we find animals 
there suffering in consequence of the guilt of 
man, 

The next objection we refer to is: That 
certain passions are in Scripture ascribed 
to God; as, for instance, jealousy, hatred, 
anger, repentance, and such like. Now, our 
reply to this is, that all the truths in the word 
of God are conveyed, more or less, in figura- 
tive language. Heaven is set forth by a 
glorious land, and a beauteous temple; its 
access, by gates of pearl; its bliss, by fruits 
that grow, and streams that roll, harps of 


200 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 


sweet sound, with minstrels that play upon 
them. All this every one understands to be 
figurative language, needful to convey to 
man some idea of the exalted glory and 
felicity of that better land. In the same 
way, God represents himself to man under 
the figures or symbols of human passions ; 
not that man may believe God to be like 
himself, a creature liable to anger and to 
change, but that man may have a clearer con- 
ception of God’s feelings towards sin and 
holiness, towards injustice and crime. Hence, 
when it is said God is angry with the sinner, 
it simply denotes that He disapproves, by 
His very nature, of sin. When it is said 
that God is jealous, it simply denotes that 
He will bear with no rival in His worship, 
no claimant of His glory. When it is said 
that he repents, it simply denotes that He 
alters the course He formerly pursued, not in 
respect to His purposes, but to our percep- 
tions. We must not blame God’s words, but 
our own weakness. Revelation is the infi- 
nite within the limitations of our humanity. 
If God had left these expressions on record 
without any explanation, there might be 
some pretence for this objection ; but in 
order to guard against any misconception, 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 20] 


we read: “My thoughts are not your 
thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, 
saith the Lord; for as the heavens are 
higher than the earth, so are my ways 
higher than your ways, and my thoughts 
than your thoughts;”? and again, He has 
represented Himself “the same yesterday, 
and to-day, and for ever? “God is not 
man, that He should repent.”? The objec- 
tion, therefore, that God is represented as 
literally possessed of human passions is at 
once disposed of. 

Another objection is drawn from the text, 
wherein it is said that God hardened the 
heart of Pharaoh. Infidels say: “Is it rea- 
sonable or just, that God should condemn 
that man to everlasting destruction, whose 
heart He himself hardened??? Now, we 
may observe here, in the first place, that it 
has been noticed more than two hundred 
years ago, that the literal rendering of the 
phrase in several instances may justly be: 
the Lord permitted, or suffered, Pharaoh’s 
heart to be hardened; the same mood of the 
Hebrew verb which means to cause, signify- 
ing also to permit. And if it be an objection 
against revelation being the inspiration of 
God that He permitted Pharaoh’s heart to 


202 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


be hardened, there is the same objection 
against creation being the work of God. 
Does He not suffer men to be born blind? 
Does He not suffer men to come into the 
world deformed? Does He not suffer inju- 
ries and casualties to destroy hundreds? 
You will not say, that this proves creation 
not to be the work of God. In the same 
way, if He suffers the passions of men to 
work their natural evil results, and their 
hearts to be hardened, it does not prove that 
the book which records such things is not 
the word of God. But 1 would not shrink 
from the strongest view of this matter. I 
take the words as they are in our version: 
«The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart ;”? and 
I say, there was nothing in that, inconsistent 
with the attributes of a wise, and just, and 
merciful, and gracious God. For all the offers 
of the Gospel, all the motives and opportuni- 
ties and means that could possibly be presented 
are presented to the sinner ; and if he rejects 
them all, sins against the clearest light, tram- 
ples on the kindest love, and nothing more 
can be done for him than has been done, 
then there are remaining just two ways in 
which that man may be punished. Either 
he may be cut off, and soul and body both 


Is THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 203 


cast ino hell; or his physical life may be 
spared, while his moral and spiritual life 
may be extinguished. In either case, the 
punishment is the same. Pharaoh, instead 
of having his heart hardened, might justly 
have been cut off at that moment, and cast 
out from the presence of God; but instead 
of this, God suffered his physical existence to 
be protracted, and put an end to his moral 
and spiritual existence, and therefore while 
on earth he was in effect in that place where 
mercy never comes. You would not have 
objected, if God had cut off his natural life, 
and given him no more means of repentance, 
for this is done every day. Then you ought 
not to object to God’s cutting off His moral 
and spiritual life, after every thing had been 
done for him that could be done. 

The next doctrine objected to, is that con- 
tained in the words, God “ wistts the sins of 
the fathers upon the children.’ Do we not 
find this illustrated in ordinary life? <A 
nobleman rebels against his prince; he loses 
his coronet, and his family suffer for centu- 
ries afterwards. A king commits some great 
crime; .and the whole country is thrown 
into rebellion and war A father, through 
gambling, loses all his property ; and his chil- 


204 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD ?. 


dren, and his children’s children suffer. A 
parent becomes a drunkard and a debauchee, 
wastes his health and injures his constitu- 
tion; and his offspring are diseased, to the 
third and fourth generation, Now, what is 
all this, but the sins of the fathers visited 
upon the children in the arrangements of a 
Providence we can see, and in the occur- 
rences of daily life? If therefore the record 
of this fact in the Bible, proves the book not 
to be the inspiration of God, then would the 
happening of this fact every day before our 
eyes prove creation and Providence not to be 
the workmanship of God. Moreover, when 
God states that He visits the iniquities of the 
fathers upon the children, He does noé refer 
to their after existence. In Ezekiel (xvii. 
19) we read: “Yet say ye, Why? doth 
not the son bear the iniquity of the father ? 
When the son hath done that which is law- 
ful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, 
and hath done them, he shall surely live. 
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son 
shall not bear the iniquity of the father, 
neither shall the father bear the iniquity of 
the son. The righteousness of the righteous 
shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the 
wicked shall be upon him.” This chapter 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 205 


refers to the after existence of the soul. The 
Jews construed the statement in Exodus 
falsely, and understood it to refer to God’s 
arrangements in eternity, as well as to His 
dealings in time: but heie by the mouth of 
His prophet He distinctly contradicts this. 
He shows, that “visiting the iniquities of 
the fathers upon the children”? has reference 
purely to man’s temporal condition, and has 
no direct bearing whatever on the destinies 
of his immortal soul. 

A passage objected to by infidels as incon- 
sistent with the idea of the moral character 
of God, is in Joshua (xii. 7,) where we read 
that God commanded all the Canaanitish 
nations to be extirpated. They say, that 
it seems wholly inconsistent with what we 
should suppose to be the merciful character 
of God, that He should thus command whole 
nations to be destroyed by the sword. But 
when we hear that pestilence has depopu- 
Jated crowded cities, or that Napoleon has 
swept the continent of Europe, and left but 
the wrecks of smoking homes and the bones 
of slaughtered citizens to be the mementos 
of his march, we do not say that this isa 
proof that there is no God in heaven, nor 


any moral government of the inhabitants of 
18 . 


206 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


the earth; and yet, if the destruction of the 
nations of the Canaanites zmmediately by 
God is a proof that the Bible which records 
it is not the inspiration of God, then the 
destruction of nations by the sword of the 
conqueror, or by the breath of pestilence, 
must be a proof that there is no God, or that 
creation is not the work of God, nor provi- 
dence a part of the general government of 
God. When we see juries in our own coun- 
try bringing in a verdict of Guilty, the judge 
pronouncing sentence of death, and that sen- 
tence executed, we do not complain that 
there is any thing wrong or unjust in the 
act. Now these Canaanites are declared and 
proved to have polluted and stained the land 
with abominable crimes: they had time and 
were urged to repent of them, and thus 
escape destruction; and when they were cut 
off by the sword of Heaven, it was merely 
the holy judge pronouncing sentence on fla- 
grant criminals, and the righteous governor 
executing that sentence to the letter. We 
are not to regard the extirpation of the Ca- 
naanites as an act of arbitrary or private 
revenge, but as the execution of the sentence 
of retributive justice, and’ such as had per- 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 207 


haps as great mercy to the innocent, as equity 
to the guilty. 

It is urged, that the command given to 
Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, is alto- 
gether inconsistent with all right concep. 
tions of the justice and the mercy of God. 
First, the apparently intended act was sym- 
bolical; it was meant to represent the sacri- 
fice of Christ, the Son of God, as a propitia- 
tion for the sins of the world. In the second 
place, God has a sovereign and indisputable 
claim to the life of His creature, when, where, 
and how He pleases; so much so, that if 
Abraham had actually plunged the knife into 
the bosom of Isaac at the command of God, 
it would have been right in Abraham, and 
just in God. He has a right to summon the 
soul to his presence through any avenue, in 
any circumstances, and by any instrument- 
ality that to Him may seem meet. In the 
last place, Abraham did nof¢ kill Isaac, and 
this alone extinguishes all objections, 

In the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy 
and in some parts of Ezekiel, there are 
passages, it is alleged, so indecicate, as to 
be unfit- for general perusal; and _ infidels 
have urged this as a reason for disbelieving 
the Bible to be the inspiration of God, and 


208 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


Romanists, as an argument against its general 
perusal. In the first place, we have no fact 
recorded in Scripture which does not actually 
occur in creation and in providence; and if 
therefore the record of that which to us seems , 
indelicate is an argument that God did not 
write the book, then the actual occurrence in 
creation and in providence of these same in- 
delicacies must be an argument that God did 
not create the world, and that he does not 
rule it by his providence. In courts of justice, 
and in professional and medical communi- 
cations, circumstances transpire which may 
seem indelicate to us, but of which we never 
complain, because we know that such com- 
munications are essential to the good and 
well-being of mankind; and may not these 
communications of the great Physician and 
the moral Restorer of the world, notwith- 
standing their apparent indelicacy, be essen- 
tial for the moral restoration of the world ? 
The Scripture is an exact portrait of man ; 
if it shows the bright in his character, it also 
records the black; if it proclaims that which 
ennobles and exalts him, it discloses that 
which tends to depress and humble him. 
This book would not be, as it professes to be, 
a full length portraiture, not merely of man’s 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 209 


restoration, but of man’s ruin, and wretched- 
ness, and guilt, if it did not record fully and 
fairly the sins, as well as the virtues, of 
human kind. There is also, in the present 
day, what is thought delicacy of language, 
which was unknown, even two or three cen- 
turies ago, and still more so in the day when 
the Bible was written. In ancient times, 
and especially in Eastern countries, men and 
women never mingled together in society, 
but kept perfectly distinct and separate ; and 
allusions might be made, in such circum- 
stances, by no means indelicate. Ina recent 
work, written, I believe, by an Arab, it is 
Stated as a most revolting circumstance, that 
in England the ladies walk the streets with- 
out being veiled, and openly mingle with 
men in society and in the churches. For 
this, the foreigner charges us with a want of 
delicacy, just as we charge some thing else 
as indelicate against a past generation. But 
the question may well be mooted, whether 
there was not more real delicacy in days 
when these very expressions were employed, 
than there is in the age in which we live, 
with all its supposed perfection and fastidi- 
ous refinement. There is here also a distinc- 
tion worth recollection. When we read of 
18* 


210 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 


that which is immoral and indelicate in the 
novel or romance, it is recorded in such a 
way as to excite corresponding emotions in 
the mind of the reader; but when we read 
what are called the most indelicate records 
in the word of God, they are recorded in 
tones of holy and righteous severity, and in- 
stead of being calculated to excite one unhal- 
lowed emotion, they are calculated to make 
us abhor, and abstain from what is foul, 
and love whatsoever is just, and pure, and of 
good report. And for all these reasons we 
say, that those parts of Holy Writ which 
appear to us indelicate may be vindicated 
on the strictest principles, and shown to be 
neither inconsistent with the moral character 
of God, nor calculated to contaminate the 
feelings and affections of mankind. 
Polygamy, it is objected, was suffered to 
exist among the Hebrews and in other East- 
ern nations. We read of the number of wives 
of David, and of the concubines of Solomon ; 
and the infidel immediately starts the objec- 
tion—Can this have been permitted by the 
same God who again and again forbids it? 
Now, the laws which may be suited to one 
age of the world may not be suited to 
another age; the laws which may be most 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 211 


essential in one stage of the world’s history 
may be the reverse in another stage. Our Lord 
gives the reason of the change. Polygamy 
was suffered “because of the hardness of the 
people’s hearts.”’ It was a practice tolerated 
in the circumstances of the age, admitted to 
be a corruption of the primeval law, not a 
perpetual moral maxim intended to regulate 
the intercourse and conduct of mankind in 
after times. Is it not the fact, that there are 
different laws, not only for different ages, 
but for different states of the same commu- 
nity? The same laws would not do for the 
prison which are required for upright and 
polished men; the same laws do not prevail 
in a penal colony that are in force in the free 
mother country; the same laws will not do 
for Otaheite that are proper for Britain. 
There exists in the usages of men a certain 
accommodation of the laws to the country 
they are intended to regulate. We have 
something like this illustrated in the present 
day, in the conduct, for instance, of medical 
men. Suppose a person is seized with a 
dangerous disease, and is placed under a 
physician; suppose he is a person who has 
been accustomed to drink a considerable 
quantity of alcoholevery day. Tle physician, 


212 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


though he will reprehend the use of alcohol, 
will allow that person a certain quantity of 
it every day, and will decrease it gradually, 
until the patient is able to abstain from it 
wholly. Now it may have been, that God 
allowed, in the circumstances of other times, 
the gradual diminution of a practice, which 
now, when “life and immortality are brought 
to light,’’ is utterly interdicted. Polygamy, 
too, like many other things, is not sinful ex- 
cept by the interdict of God. Without God’s 
law upon the subject, there is no more guilt 
in polygamy, than there would be in vio- 
Jating the seventh day while God had not 
commanded it to be kept holy. It is His 
command that makes it sinful. Polygamy is 
not essentially sinful, like murder or theft; 
but is now become sinful, because the com- 
mand of God forbids it. Cain, in the infancy 
of the world, married his sister, and it was 
not then sinful; but now it would be most 
sinful. So that there must be some adapta- 
tion between the age and condition of the 
individuals, and the laws employed to govern 
and restrain them. 

It has been contended, contradictory as it 
may appear to the former objection, that the 
morality of the New Testament is too strict 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 2183 


and severe. The young man, for instance, 
says—* It cannot be sin for me to gratify the 
passions and propensities of my nature. I 
am constituted so, and God has made me so, 
and surely it cannot be sin in me to do what 
God has made me disposed to.”” Now we 
shall find, that the brother, who will plead 
for the gratification of certain passions in 
himself, will reprobate the indulgence of 
those passions in a Sister or some one near 
and dear to him. This very circumstance 
shows that there is in such a one’s heart, if 
his lusts and passions would allow it to be 
felt, a conviction that he is acting contrary to 
the will of God, and inconsistently with the 
welfare of society. The lofty holiness re- 
quired in the gospel, is merely the highest 
happiness required in man. The highest 
morality is the highest joy. God did not 
constitute man necessarily a sinner The 
whole guilt and responsibility are ours if we 
sin, while all the glory must be God’s if we 
are reclaimed from the practice of vice to the 
practice of virtue and piety. 

It is said that the murder of Jephthah’s 
daughter by Jephthah seems inconsistent 
with the views we form of the mercy and 
justice of God. If we peruse the chapter 


214 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


in which this is recorded (Judges xi), we 
shall come to the conclusion that Jephthah 
did not destroy his daughter, and that the 
common and popular impression is wholly 
unwarranted by the sacred narrative. It is 
stated, first of all, that Jephthah promised. 
that the first thing that met him, if he re- 
turned victorious and in peace, “should 
surely be the Lord’s, and he would offer it 
up for a burnt offering.””? Now, if we refer 
to the marginal reading (which is generally 
the most correct), we shall find it run— It 
shall surely be the Lord’s, or I will offer up 
a burnt-offering ;”’ in.the original there is no 
word for “zt”? (I will offer 7¢ up”’), but the 
literal reading is—“ Whatsoever cometh forth 
of the door of my house to meet me, shall 
sutely be the Lord’s, or” (if I do not devote 
that object to Him) “[ will offer up a burnt- 
offering.”? In the next place, Jephthah the 
father was not at liberty to kill his daughter 
by any law; much less on any vow made in 
haste. Human sacrifices were interdicted 
under all circumstances. And further; in 
order to offer up a sacrifice, there must have 
been a priest to do it. Jephthah was nota 
priest; he was a soldier, and no priest of the 
tribe of Aaron dare offer up a human victim’ 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 215 


mm sacrifice to God. In the next place, it is 
stated in the thirty-eighth verse, that “she 
went with her companions for two months, 
and bewailed her virginity upon the moun- 
tains.” She was secluded and separated 
from the world, and devoted to a sort of mo- 
nastic life. If she had been slain by her 
father and offered up as a sacrifice or burnt- 
offering, how could this have been recorded ? 
_And in the last verses it is said, that “her 
father did with her according to his vow’? 
(not “he slaughtered her’’), “and she knew 
no man ; and it was a custom in Israel, that 
the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament 
the daughter of Jephthah four days in a 
year.”’ The literal rendering of that last ex- 
pression is, that “the daughters of Israel 
went yearly to lament with the daughter of 
Jephthah.” Any one who will refer to the 
original, will see that the preposition “ with” 
is there. If we take all these circumstances 
into consideration, it will appear that the 
objection, that Jephthah, with the command 
or permission of God, sacrificed his own 
daughter as a burnt-offering, falls to the 
ground, because no such thing occurred, and 
all that did happen was, that she was devoted 


216 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 


to the immediate service and worship of God 
in a state of perpetual virginity. 

Another passage objected to as inconsistent 
with the character of God, is found in the 
second book of Samuel (xii. 31) where it is 
said of David, when he had taken the city of 
Rabbah—« And he brought forth the people 
that were therein, and put them under saws, 
and under harrows of iron, and under axes 
of iron, and made them pass through the 
brick-kiln : and thus did he unto all the cities 
of the children of Ammon. So David and 
all the people returned unto J erusalem.”’ 
This is recorded in another passage of sacred 
writ in still ampler and stronger terms; and 
Paine, especially, has boasted and said—* Is 
this the inspiration of God? was David act- 
ing according to the suggestions of Him, who 
is supposed to be wise and merciful, when he 
thus tortured and destroyed hundreds of hu- 
man beings?”? Now some will be surprised 
when I inform them, that the Hebrew word 
beth, which is here translated “ under,” does 
not mean wnder, (that is, placed beneath,) 
but means fo (in the sense in which we say, 
in ordinary language, “I put him to the 
plough”); the literal meaning is, that he put 
them ¢o saws and fo harrows and fo axes 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 217 


and ¢o the making of bricks—that is, he made 
them perpetual working slaves. There is no 
warrant whatever for the construction that 
he destroyed them by saws and harrows and 
axes, or inhumanly forced them into the 
furnace of the brick-kiln. He simply set 
them to a laborious drudgery. 

Another passage adduced as a disproof of 
Christianity being from God, is the statement 
that some “little children’? mocked Elisha, 
and said to him, “Go up, thou bald-head,’’ 
and that for this, forty-two of them were 
instantly, by the command of God, torn to 
pieces by bears that came forth from the 
wood. Now the Hebrew word, here trans- 
lated “little children,”’ is in various parts of 
the word of God translated “young men.”’ 
Isaac, at the age of twenty, is called by this 
very Hebrew noun. Joseph, at the age of 
thirty, is called by the same word—a young 
man. The real rendering of the passage 
therefore is, that forty-two young men (who 
may have been twenty or thirty years of 
age) came forth from the city of Bethel, 
which had been devoted to the worship of 
an idol, and blasphemed the living God, and 
mocked his prophet; and in just judgment 
for their conduct, the bears, the executioners 

19 


218 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


simply, came forth, at the bidding of the 
Most High, from the forest, and destroyed 
them. 

The next objection which I notice, against 
the Scriptures being the inspiration of God, 
rests on whut are called its curses ; those, 
for instance, recorded in the fifty-fifth Psalm, 
and in the book of Deuteronomy—* Cursed 
shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt 
thou be in the field; cursed shall be thy bas- 
ket and thy store; cursed shall be the fruit 
of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the in- 
crease of thy kine, and the flocks of thy 
sheep; cursed shalt thou be when thou com- 

est in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou 
goest out.” Now, in reply to this, I observe, 
that the future tense and the imperative 
mood of the Hebrew verb are in certain per- 
sons precisely the same, and that it was en- 
tirely in the option of our translators to ren- 
der every one of these passages “ Thou wilt” 
or “Thou shalt,” as “ Shalt thou be” or “ Be 
thou.”? And since this liberty was left us, it 
might seem more consistent with the char- 
acter of God, that these passages should be 
rendered, “ Thou wilt be cursed ;” and in the 
fifty-fifth Psalm, “Death will seize upon 
them, and they will go down quick into 


_ IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 219 


hell.” Generally, wherever the expression is 
put in the imperative mood, it might be ren- 
dered in the future tense; and thereby made 
a prediction of what will surely betide the 
sinner, and not an imprecation of what is 
deserved. But suppose that these passages 
are rightly rendered in the imperative mood, 
and not in the future tense, I do not hesitate 
to defend them; still they do not militate 
against the character of God. God has a 
right to send forth His servants as judges, 
to pronounce His sentence upon those that 
rebel against Him and disobey His laws. 
And bear in mind, that when Moses or David 
used these imprecations (if we call them so,) 
they did so, not as private individuals, grati- 
fying personal feelings, but as judges acting 
by the authority and clothed with the com- 
mission of their Lord and Master in heaven. 

The next objection adduced against Scrip- 
ture, to which I shall refer, zs everlasting 
punishment. The infidel says, it seems 
wholly inconsistent with the mercy and good- 
ness of God, that His creatures should be 
doomed to everlasting suffering, and thata 
punishment should be inflicted so dispropor- 
tionate to the sins of which they have been 
guilty. Ido not agrée with those who have 


220 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


tried to explain away this awful truth; they 
seem to me to torture Scripture. But if I 
can show, that there are punishments even 
in this world which seem in their measure 
disproportionate to the offence, it will not do 


to plead against the revelation of God because - 


there is a punishment declared in it which 
seems to us disproportionate to the offence. 
Now suppose a man commits one single sin ; 
how often is it found, that he incurs a life- 
time of shame, and suffering, and sorrow ! 
Does it not seem a punishment totally dispro- 
portionate to the offence of which he has been 
guilty, that through a whole life he should 
suffer shame and sorrow for one single viola- 
tion of the laws of his country, or the re- 
scripts of his God? And again, in the world 
in which we live, we can show even now, 
the infliction of a perpetual punishment. We 
find that some are suffering punishment every 
week, every day, every hour, every moment ; 
and though it be in different individuals, yet 
that a large portion of the race as a whole 
is undergoing perpetual punitive treatment. 
And therefore it may not be inconsistent with 
the character of God, that the individual who 
has broken His laws and rebelled against 
His offers of mercy, should be consigned to 


» 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 22] 


a place where mercy is no longer offered. 
But do we object to everlasting happiness ? 
The infidel speaks of desert ; he thinks moral 
conduct is entitled to reward, and immoral 
conduct deserves punishment, and he admits 
that everlasting happiness may justly be con- 
ferred on what is pleasing to God, and com- 
mendable. Then why should he object to 
everlasting punishment being decreed for im- 
moral conduct, that is displeasing to God, 
and blameworthy ? But I add, the punish- 
ment of the lost is of that kind, that it must 
be perpetual by the very necessity of the 
thing. What is hell? It is not a place of 
literal flames and literal fire. I need not tell 
you that the language employed is symboli- 
cal and figurative. Hell is moral aberration 
from God, just as heaven is moral approxi- 
mation to God. At every step the lost recede 
from God, their horror and remorse and 
misery must be augmented, and the possi- 
bility of return diminished, just as at every 
Step the saint approximates to God, his joy 
and peace and happiness must be increased, 
And therefore the sentence pronounced upon 
the ungodly is merely—“ He that is unjust, let 
him be unjust still ; and he which is filthy, let 
him be filthy still;?’? and the sentence pro- 
8: Yo 


992 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


nounced upon the righteous is just—“< He 
that is righteous, let him be righteous still ; 
and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” 
Hell is just the impress of a centrifugal 
power on man’s soul, that carries him fur- 
ther and further from God and from happi- 
ness; and Heaven is a centripetal power 
imparted to man’s soul, that draws him 
nearer and nearer to God and to joy. The 
one begins with “ Depart,” and the other with 
“Come.’’ And therefore, from the very na- 
ture of the thing, and from parity of reason- 
ing upon eternal blessedness, eternal punish- 
ment does not seem at all inconsistent with 
the character of God, or contrary to what 
we should believe to be His dealings here- 
after. 

Such are some of the objections urged 
against the word of God. When fairly ex- 
amined, they do not tell in favour of infi- 
delity ; but the contrary. May the Spirit of 
God bring home his truth to our hearts and 
consciences; and convince us, that though 
there are in the word of God “some things 
hard to be understood,” it is only “ they that 
are unlearned and unstable’? who “ wrest 
them to their own destruction.” 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 223 


CHAPTER IX, 
I3 THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY AND INCONSISTENT ! 


One of the first objections which have been 
adduced against the statements of the word 
of God, is, that the whole story of Paradise 
lost, with its happy pair, its tree of life and 
its tree of knowledge, is a tale altogether un- 
worthy of God. Now if there were another 
account of the origin of evil of a more phi- 
losophic character, if there were any other 
tale or story that could be substantiated, or 
that bore upon its face the impress of a purer 
and a nobler author, then indeed we might 
peradventure reject the sacred narrative. 
But when we turn to the stories recorded in 
the heathen poets, in Hesiod, and Virgil, and 
Ovid, and Lucretius—when we read of their 
golden age, of the golden apple and the Hes- 
perides, of the results of Pandora’s box and 
Prometheus’ theft, and kindred tales—we 
see at once the anile and puerile statements 
of a wild and exuberant imagination, but 
yet at the same time they are confirmatory 
of the inspired record, by their being evi- 


224 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


dently taken from it; and if we proceed to 
compare the simple and noble narrative of 
Genesis with the fancies and figments of the 
poets, we are constrained to acknowledge 
that the first is the truth, bearing upon its 
brow the imprimatur of God, and the last the 
fables of driveling ignorance. 

But it is further objected, that the subject- 
ing of our first parents to a test, by observ- 
ance of which they should stand, and by 
disobedience to which they should fall, seems 
to have been an unnecessary and uncalled- 
for obligation imposed on them by God. It 
was not so. Man was by his very being a 
creature, and God the Creator. It was es- 
sentially necessary, therefore, that the crea- 
ture should be placed under law; that 
there should be in the creature, and about 
the creature, the traces of a _ creature’s 
origin, and of a creature’s dependence and 
allegiance to his Maker. Every orb and 
intelligence must stand thus. Now what 
could be more just, simple, or easy to 
be observed, than the arrangement of 
Eden; as if God, by it, proclaimed—« In 
order to show that thou, Adam, art a 
creature, and in duty bound to recognize and 
obey me, thy Creator, I lay upon thy shoul- 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 225 


der no harder burden than this, that thou 
mayest eat of every fruit-tree that waves its 
branches in broad and beauteous Eden, save 
only of one single tree, of which thou mayest 
not eat; for if thou dost eat, death, with all 
its woe, must follow as the necessary conse- 
quence?” Ifthe temptation had been great 
to eat of this tree, one might have said that 
Adam was placed in trying circumstances; 
but when the temptation to eat was the least 
possible, and when the punishment in case 
of eating was the greatest possible, we can 
see in these the arrangement and the require- 
ments of heavenly order, the love of God, 
and the inexcusable heinousness of the guilt 
that was involved in that crime, when Adam 
took of the forbidden tree, and— 


“ Brought death into all the world, and all our woe.” 


But were we to reject the Mosaic account 
of the introduction of evil, we do not get rid 
of the difficulty. We see sin and suffering 
naked and grim in the world. How do you 
reconcile the existence of these, and the 
existence of a benevolent God? What bet- 
ter solution than that of Christianity can you 
give? I therefore assert, that whether we 
compare the record of Meses with the legen- 


226 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


dary fables of the heathen poets, or with the 
ablest and brightest conjectures of mind or 
suggestions of philosophy, or whether we 
analyze and examine all the circumstances 
of the case, we shall be constrained to ac- 
knowledge that the whole thing was worthy 
of God, and that in making this arrangement 
God not only acted mercifully, but justly, 
wisely, and well. 

The Mosaic record is wholly disbelieved 
by some. Its credibility must rest on evi- 
dence. To confirm its antiquity and truth 
in its merely historical aspect, I would refer 
to the division of time, which prevails in 
almost every country in the world; a division 
traceable to the books of Moses. For in- 
stance ; the division of the year into 365 days 
and a fraction is the natural result of observing 
the earth’s motion about the sun; the division 
of time into months is a very natural conse- 
quence of observing the phases of the moon; 
and the division of time into day and night is 
obviously forced on us. But how can we ac- 
count for the fact, that in Europe, in Asia, in 
Africa, and in America, time is divided into 
periods of seven days,commonly called weeks ? 
No physical observation will account for this. 
No inference from sun, moon, or stars, will 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 227 


account for it. Obviously, therefore, the only 
conclusion we can arrive at is, that it was 
either a tradition handed down from the first 
fathers of the human race, and preserved 
among them, though scattered to the utmost 
bounds of the habitable globe, or that it was 
directly copied from the writings of Moses, and 
incorporated in the laws and habits of the 
nations. So tied, moreover, does man seem 
to be to this division of time into seven days, 
or into weeks, that when French philosophy, 
in its frenzy and infatuation, tried to abolish 
it, and instead of weeks to establish decades, 
the whole nation soon revolted against the 
change, and returned, as from some. mysteri- 
ous instinct, to the old division into seven 
days, or weeks, as they now observe it. 
Another proof of the antiquity of the Mo- 
saic record, is found in the language of almost 
every country in the world. Words such as 
Adam and Eve, all indicate the Hebrew to 
have been the language of Eden. Every 
one acquainted with the Hebrew tongue, 
and with the Greek and Latin and modern 
languages, will see that most of them can 
more or less plainly be traced back to the 
Hebrew. The very letters of the Hebrew 
alphabet—aleph, beth, gimel, daleth, &c., are 
exactly parallel with the Greek—alpha, beta, 


228 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


gamma, delta, &c.; and if we refer to the 
English alphabet, or the Italian, French, 
Spanish, German, we find nearly the same 
forms given to the letters, and almost the 
same sounds, and al] corresponding strikingly 
with the Hebrew; while in the Welsh, the 
Gaelic, and the Celtic, we find many words 
plainly of Hebrew origin. What does this 
prove, but that languages look backward to 
the first, the Hebrew; that the language of 
every nation owns the East as its parent? 
In one word, the languages of the earth are 
vocal with attestations to the truth of the 
Mosaic record. And so the structure of lan- 
guage, as well as the epochs of chronology, 
proclaims in impressive accents—* God’s 
word is Truth.” 

Some philosophers have tried to prove, 
from certain Hindoo and Chinese calcula- 
tions of eclipses, that the earth is very much 
older than the Mosaic record represents it to 
be. The Chinese have one table, in which 
they calculate eclipses that happened many 
thousand years before the earth was created, 


according to the Mosaic history. But the ° 


celebrated La Place has demonstrated, that 
these tables of the Chinese are downright for- 
geries, and that nota single particle of de- 
pendence is to be placed upon them. 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 229 


The same celebrated astronomer has de- 
monstrated a most important fact. The earth 
moves round the sun in an oval line; anda 
line passing from one end of that oval to the 
other, is called, in astronomical language, the 
line of the apsides. Now it has been found, 
that this line rises at a certain angle from 
what is called the line of the equinoxes, and 
proceeds in its own direction in a given ratio 
so accurate and constant, that in twenty-five 
thousand years it would perform a perfect 
revolution, and meet the equinox again. 
But La Place, having demonstrated that this 
line proceeds a certain distance in a given 
time, has calculated the precession of this 
line from the line of the equinoxes, and 
found it to amount to such a number of de- 
grees, as proves that it has been proceeding 
about 5,800 years; exactly agreeing with the 
account found in the Mosaic record in the 
word of God. 

There is another proof of the recency of 
the earth’s formation that has been suggested. 
It is ascertained, that by the action of the 
winds, rains, and frosts, every mountain is 
undergoing a gradual decomposition ; so that 
Ben Lomond and Ben Nevis are so many 
feet lower than they were two or three thou- 

20 


230 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


sand years ago, and if they had been in ex 
istence ten or twenty thousand years, these 
mountains, it is thought, would have become 
levelled, and the whole earth would have 
been now a plain spheroid. Now the very 
fact, that the mountains are not yet levelled, 
and the valleys are not yet filled up with the 
débris proceeding from them, some think a 
proof that the world is not eternal, and is 
probably but about the age the Mosaic record 
announces it to be. 

Another infidel objection is, that the lan- 
guage and ideas of the books of Moses are 
inconsistent with the discoveries of modern 
science. For instance: Moses states that the 
light was created and shone upon the world 
prior to the fourth day, on which the sun 
and moon were created ; and infidel philoso- 
phers ask, How can we find light without 
the sun? Our reply is this; it is true, we 
cannot now find day-light without the sun 
having risen to disseminate that light, but 
this does not prove that hght may not have 
existed before the fourth day of creation 
without the sun to disseminate it. We have 
a parallel case in the waters. It is recorded 
that the earth and the water were so inti- 
mately mingled together, that they formed 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 231 


one vast chaos, and God separated the earth 
from the water, and made the ocean to be 
that great reservoir which sends its waters 
thoughout the arteries, veins, and fountains 
of the earth. In the same manner He col- 
lected the particles of light into the sun, and 
made it to be the source whence that light 
should be shed forth over the globe. We 
read, “God made two great lights,”? but the 
literal translation is, He “made two great 
light-bearers.’ The sun and the moon may 
have existed millions of years before this. 
What God did upon the fourth day, was to 
consolidate the scattered rays of light in that 
body called the sun, and to make him to be 
the great and glorious luminary to light the 
world that rolls around him, and on which 
we dwell. So that the language of Moses, 
we observe, is the language of the New- 
tonian philosopher, when he says, not that 
the sun and moon were created at that time, 
but that they were then made to sustain a 
relationship to the world, which they had 
not sustained before, that of lighting it by 
their rays. 

Another objection to the Mosaic record, 
urged with apparent triumph, is, that the 
human race is plainly not sprung from one 


232 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


common parent. The infidel craniologist— 
though all craniologists are not infidels—the 
infidel craniologist will show you the shape 
of the head of a European, of an African, of 
an Asiatic, of an American; he will show 
you the colours of their skins—the white, the 
jet black, and the copper coloured ; and he 
will insist on the inference that they are not 
all sprung from one common parent. Now 
our reply to this is to be found in the pages 
of Buffon, who was a man not disposed to 
favour or help Christianity, who affirms that 
man, though white in Europe, yellow in 
Asia, and black in Africa, yet is one race, 
and must evidently have come from the same 
original. One fact will demonstrate the truth 
of this. At this moment on the coast of 
India there is found a colony of Jews, who 
were originally of a comparatively fair com- 
plexion, and who of course have not been 
permitted to intermarry with others of a 
different race, and yet they are now as black 
as the inhabitants of Guinea, or the swarthy 
sons of Africa; a demonstration that climate, 
and sun, and food, are sufficient to account 
for diversities of colour in the human race. 
The darkness of the complexion too is directly 
the effect of climate. In Guinea man is jet 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 233 


black; in Abyssinia, less hot, he is less dark ; 
in Asia he is still less so; and in Europe he 
is white. It is monstrous to depreciate the 
African asa lower race. Some of the noblest 
men that have shed the triumphs of their 
genius upon the world in which we live 
were black as the blackest slaves of Africa. 
Hannibal, the Wellington of ancient days, 
the man that shook Rome with his name, 
was black, probably, as the blackest slave 
at this moment toiling in the West Indies. 
Another objection urged by the infidel has 
been, that the Mosaic record cannot be true, 
because it does not account for the peopling 
of America. America was unknown, they 
say, till Columbus discovered it, and there- 
fore cannot have been peopled from the 
same common parent with Asia, Europe, and 
Africa. Now this has been admirably settled 
by the voyages of Captain Cook. He has 
shown that the coast of Tartary on the Asiatic 
side, and the coast of America on the oppo- 
site side, indicate, like the cliffs of Dover and 
Calais, that they were originally one conti 
nent, that they are separated only by a very 
narrow sea, and that between these .wo con- 
tinents there are two islands, from either of 
which we may see either vast continent. It 
20* 


234 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


may be seen too, that the geological pheno- 
mena presented on the Asiatic side and on 
American side are precisely similar. It is on 
record that the natives of the Society Isles 
have been drifted in their boats six hundred 
miles from their home; and therefore the 
presumption is strong that the inhabitants of 
Asia sailed to America, and that by them 
aboriginal America was peopled with its 
teeming thousands. It has been shown, also, 
that the waters of the intervening sea are 
frequently frozen over in the winter; and 
therefore, without the use of boats at all, we 
can account for the peopling of America. 
The inhabitants of the new world are, in 
short, the children and grandchildren of the 
inhabitants of the old. 

One fact that I would here adduce, is in 
no slight degree demonstrative of the truth 
of the Mosaic record ; it is, the remnant of 
that supremacy which Moses states to have 
been originally bestowed on man, still pos- 
sessed by man wherever we find him. All 
animals—the mole, or the owl, or the lamb— 
exert their strength and develope their pecu- 
ilarities, simply to supply themselves with 
food and to perpetuate their species. But 
not so with man; we find him mastering the 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 235 


energies of brutes, and subduing them to his 
will; bringing the element of steam, ‘and of 
water, and of fire, to subserve his interests, 
manufacture and carry his goods, and exe- 
cute his designs; and in the shepherd or in 
the king, in the mechanic or in the merchant, 
in the sailor or in the soldier, developing 
bright and still surviving evidences of his 
primeval lordship. Even in ruins he main- 
tains a fragment of the sceptre of the lord of 
the world, with the investiture of which he 
was formed. ‘This fact is a strong confirma- 
tion of the Mosaic record, which says that 
man was made to have dominion over the 
creatures. 

Infidels object to the longevity of the ante- 
diluvian patriarchs. They classify this state- 
ment with the fabulous legends of Greece 
and of Rome; and they say, that all present 
experience proves it absurd to imagine that 
there was a race of men who lived nine hun- 
dred or a thousand years. The ancient hea- 
then, Greeks and Latins, record the tradition, 
that men before the flood, with which they 
connect the name of Deucalion, lived to a 
much more protracted age than at present ; 
thus indicating the remains of a truth bor- 
rowed from the Jews. There is also a rea- 


236 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


son for it. Longevity was necessary to per- 
petuate and maintain revelation in the world ; 
there being no written revelation, it was 
necessary that the living witnesses of the 
word spoken by God should have many years 
added to their biography. Hence Adam, 
Methuselah, and Noah, were three links, 
that outlasted two thousand years. Methu- 
selah spake with Adam, and heard from him 
the story of his fall and restoration; and 
Noah conversed with Methuselah, and re- 
ceived from him the narrative which he had 
received from Adam. The longevity of the 
antediluvians was thus necessary to maintain 
the purity and perpetuate the progress of 
Divine truth in the world. There is nothing 
to disprove it; it rests on the credibility of 
the record, while it is also reasonable to 
expect it to have been so. 

‘The next objection is made to the occur- 
rence of what in the Mosaic record is called 
the Flood. Infidels say, that there is no 
satisfactory evidence whatever that such a 
catastrophe befell our world. But we find 
scientific men, without reference to revela- 
tion, bringing out results that substantiate 
the truth of the Bible. For instance; one 
very celebrated physiologist has shown that 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 237 


our earth must within five thousand years 
have been subjected to some dreadful and 
disturbing catastrophe, the evidence of which 
is to be found in all nations. On the tops of 
the Alps and the Apennines we find marine 
shells, skeletons of fishes, and of creatures 
whose native element is the ocean. How 
were they brought to that lofty summit? If 
we go into some inland districts of England, 
we shall find marine shells upon the chalk 
cliffs by hundreds and thousands. They stare 
the infidel in the face as he rides by them, 
and tell him that God’s word is true. We 
find the deer, which is a native of America, 
buried in Ireland; the elephant of India, a 
native of the torrid zone, in parts of Germa- 
ny; skeletons of whales in various parts of 
England; bones of extinct races in the Cor- 
dilleras, 7,000 feet high. How came these 
creatures from the very ends of the earth, to 
be located in soils so distant from their na- 
tive and congenial homes? How were they 
raised to such heights? The answer is pro- 
bable, reasonable, and true, that they were 
deposited there by a great flood that over- 
flowed the world; and they now remain, 
dumb, but expressive monuments that God’s 
word is true. There is also evidence in the 


288 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


state of the earth of a disruptive torrent hav- 
ing rolled from the south. 

Infidels have objected to the account of 
the ark, and have asserted that it it is quite 
absurd to suppose that ever there could be a 
vessel constructed large enough to hold all the 
creatures that must have been placed in it, 
together with sufficient food (it may be, for 
six or twelve months)—water for the fishes, 
corn for the four-footed animals, seeds for 
the birds, and so on. Now we will take the 
dimensions of the ark from the record of 
Moses, and calculate them on the lowest 
possible scale. There are two definitions 
given of a cubit—one that it is eighteen 
inches, or a foot and a half, the other that it 
is one foot and eight inches; we will take it 
only at the lowest. Moses states that the 
ark was 300 cubits long; this would make it 
450 feet long, or about the length of St, 
Paul’s Cathedral. The breadth of it he 
states to be 50 cubits; we have it then 75 
feet in breadth. He states it to be 30 cubits 
high; so that it was 45 feet in height. In 
other words, it was long as St. Paul’s Cathe- 
dral, nearly as broad, and about half as high. 
The tonnage of the ark, according to the cal- 
culation of modern carpenters, must have 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 239 


been about 32,000 tons. The largest ship 
of war—the St. Vincent, for instance, which 
is of a size altogether unimaginable to those 
who have never seen it—is 2,500 tons bur- 
den; so that the ark must have been equal 
to seventeen first-rate ships of war, and if 
armed as such ships are, it would have con- 
tained much beyond 18,000 men, and _ pro- 
visions for them for eighteen months. Now 
Buffon has stated, that all the four-footed 
animals may be reduced to 250 pairs, and the 
birds toa still smaller number. On calculation, 
therefore, we shall find, that the ark would 
have held more than five times the necessary 
number of creatures, and more than five 
times the required quantity of food to main- 
tain them for twelve months. Fair and 
indisputable arithmetic adds its testimony to 
inspiration, and proves that God’s word is 
true. 

Another objection adduced against the 
truth of the sacred narrative, is found in the 
statements put forth by infidels respecting 
the rainbow. Our translation states, that 
when Noah stepped forth from the ark, God 
said, “I do set my bow in the cloud,” asa 
symbol that the waters of the ocean should 
never again overflow so as to depopulate the 


240 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


globe. Now the literal rendering is, «I do 
appoint my bow in the cloud;’’ and the 
very expression shows that the rainbow 
must have existed prior to the flood, though 
it was subsequent to the flood that it became 
a symbol or sacramental sign, to denote that 
the world should never again be overflowed. 
If there were rain-drops and sun-beams be- 
fore the flood, there must have been rain- 
bows; because the rainbow is produced by 
the refraction of the rays of light from the 
drops of water which fall in a shower. But 
the Bible does not assert that God created the 
rainbow immediately after the flood, but that 
He then applied it to this special use, just as 
He applied the twelve stones set up after the 
children of Israel had crossed the Jordan, as 
He still applies bread and wine in the Lord’s 
Supper, and water in baptism—namely, old 
things for new uses, sacred symbols to give 
consolation and peace to true believers. 
Another objection adduced by infidels 
against the statements of the Mosaic record, 
is, that the whole story of the buzlding of the 
tower of Babel seems absurd. Now we 
reply, that unless they can show evidence 
demonstrative of its absurdity, we are not 
prepared to reject a historical fact, because to 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 24] 


the squeamish taste of the infidel it appears 
to convey notions of absurdity. But to con- 
firm the statement of Sacred Writ, we may 
State (as infidels would generally believe any 
body sooner than Moses and Paul), that 
Herodotus and Strabo, two ancient histo- 
rians, both assert, that there was a tower 
built in Chaldea, called the tower of Belus, 
and that there were walks upon it, along 
which two chariots could drive abreast. 
And the remains discovered of it, as related 
by modern travellers, prove, that the account 
of the tower of Babel, declared to be absurd 
by infidels, is seen to be a fact by the re- 
searches of travellers, as well as the records 
of heathen historians. 

Another objection is, that the narrative of 
the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is 
absurd, and not founded in fact. Heathen 
writers refer to the very same thing; and 
that, moreover, on the soil on which those 
guilty capitals once stood, there are at this 
moment, as travellers have shown, distinct 
traces of such an overthrow as that recorded 
in the word of God. Modern travellers de- 
clare, that the Dead Sea, on the site of which 
those cities stood, is so filled with saline and 
bituminous matter, that the moment fish are 

21 


242 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


carried down the clear waters of the Jordan 
into it they perish. It is not true that birds 
cannot fly across it; but still it is of a very 
deleterious character, and the whole country 
around it presents the bleakest and most un- 
inviting prospects that man can imagine. 
The downfall of Sodom and Gomorrah, there- 
fore, is still indicated by their sites, and is 
historically true. 

Another objection is, the notion of Lo?’s 
wife being turned into a pillar of salt, 
which is so ridiculous (it is said) as to be 
absolutely improbable. I think, on the con- 
trary, when you consider the circumstances 
of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, 
it is highly probable. Lot’s wife was com- 
manded not to look back upon burning 
Sodom. She disobeyed; out of the same 
curiosity that prompted Eve to eat of the 
forbidden fruit, she disobeyed the command 
of God. Instantly she was arrested (it is 
true, by a miracle, but a miracle that used 
the very circumstances in which she was 
placed), and became a salso-bituminous mass ; 
the sulphur and fire that were falling upon 
Sodom and Gomorrah, were made, by a 
righteous and offended God, to fall upon 
her, and petrify her into a monument of the 


\ 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 243 


Divine judgments. The statement may not, 
however, of necessity mean, what we have 
supposed, that she was changed into muriate 
of soda, or what we call strictly salt; but, as 
«J will make with you a covenant of salt,’ 
means “a perpetual covenant,’ so “ Lot’s 
wife looked back from behind him, and she 
became a pillar of salt,’”? may mean that she 
was there petrified, and stood a lasting mon- 
ument of God’s judgment on disobedience to 
his righteous will. 

Again; it has been objected, that in the 
account which we have of the miracles of 
Moses performed in Egypt, and of the coun- 
ter-miracles performed by the Egyptian magi- 
cians, we see so slight a difference that we 
must believe that the magicians evidently 
did miracles as real and as good as those 
of Moses. They build this statement upon 
the fact recorded in the eighth chapter of Ex- 
odus, where it is added, when Moses perform- 
ed miracles, “ And the magicians did so with 
their enchantments ;’’ and allege this to be a 
proof that the miracles of Moses were not be- 
yond human power, since what he did, his ri- 
vals copied and performed also. It is not so 
clear that they did so. The context proves, 
that the words “they did so,” mean, “ they 


244 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


attempted to do so;” and we shall find the 
proof of this in the very facts of the case, 
For instance; when Moses turned into blood 
all the waters of the river, the streams from 
every fountain, all that was in pail, or pitcher, 
or vessel of any kind, it is added, “ And the 
magicians did so with their enchantments ;7 
but if Moses had turned a// the water into 
blood, they could only attempt to do some- 
thing like it, because, in reality, no water 
was left to be turned into blood. When 
Moses, again, by the command of God evoked 
frogs, and covered the whole land with these 
noxious animals, and the frogs were “ in their 
houses, and in their chambers, in their ovens 
and in their kneading troughs,” alike in the 
cottage and in the palace, it is added, “ The 
magicians did so with their enchantments ;”’ 
but if the whole land was already covered, it 
is,clear that they could not visibly create and 
call forth more; they could only attempt to 
do it. Moreover, if the magicians had been 
possessed of miraculous power, when the 
Ikgyptians wished to banish the frogs from 
the land, here was an opportunity for the ex- 
ercise of their power; but they were unable 
todoso. And in the eighth chapter we have 
a most decisive proof that “did so” simply 


/ 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 245 


means “attempted to do so; for when 
Aaron brought lice upon man and upon 
beast, it is added (verse 18,) “ and the magi- 
cians did so with their enchantments to bring 
forth lice, but they could not;’’ and they 
themselves acknowledged, « This is the finger 
of God.” They were conscious, that what 
they did before was merely a sort of leger- 
demain, or sleight-of-hand work. They at- 
tempted this as they did the rest; but when 
they saw that they could not mimic, with 
any visible success, this miracle of Heaven, 
or deceive the senses any more, they con- 
fesssed, “ This is the finger of God.” We 
may give the same explanation of their turn- 
ing their rods into serpents ; the Hindoos and 
Chinese at this day profess to do this, as well 
as to swallow swords; and from habit they 
are so expert at these feats, that they can 
make persons believe that they swallow the 
sword which is in their right hand, and that 
they turn the rod in their left hand into a ser- 
pent. The ancient magicians were no doubt 
masters of this art. 

Some one perhaps will say, “But why 
perform these miracles at all? what was the 
necessity or meaning of it??? The answer 
is, the first design was to convince the har- 

72) Bhs 


246 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


dened Pharaoh that God’s power was on the 
side of Israel. And if it be asked why so 
pecuiiar, and, to us, repulsive miracles were 
adopted, I answer, for great ends. The Nile, 
for instance, was the very God the Egyptians 
worshipped, and the turning its waters into 
blood was a powerful rebuke to their idol- 
atry. The serpent they also worshipped, as 
ancient inscriptions still show, and the turn- 
ing of the rod of Aaron into a serpent, and 
causing it to swallow up the rest, was also a 
no less expressive demonstration against their 
idolatry. The whole of these miracles were 
not merely arbitrary exhibitions and expres- 
sions of power, but also great and signifi- 
cant punishments of the gross and debasing 
idolatry which the Egyptians universally 
practised. 

Another objection, worthy of notice, is that 
made to the genealogies of our Lord, re- 
corded, the one by Matthew, and the other 
by Luke. But by referring to these genealo- 
gies, we shall see at once that there is not a 
particle of contradiction between them. Mat- 
thew, in giving his genealogy of our Lord, 
writes for the Jews, and gives the genealogy 
of Joseph, the reputed or legal father of our 
Lord. The name of every child of Israe} 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 247 


was entered in the public records, and his 
father’s and mother’s name, in order to be 
standing memorials of their descent; and 
Matthew, in the first chapter, begins with 
“Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat 
Jacob,’’ and so on, until in the sixteenth 
verse we read, “ And Matthan begat Jacob, 
and Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of 
Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is 
called Christ.2? The evidence, then, is deci- 
sive, that Matthew gives the genealogy of 
Joseph. Now let us refer to the Gospel of 
Luke; Matthew traces the genealogy from 
Abraham to Joseph, but Luke traces the 
genealogy from Christ to Abraham, and 
thence to Adam. Accordingly, we read in 
the third chapter of Luke—*“And Jesus 
Himself began to be about thirty years of 
age, being (as was supposed) the son of 
Joseph, which was the son of Heli, which 
was the son of Matthat,’? and so on—son 
evidently meaning son-in-law. The infidel 
says, “ How can this be true? According to 
Matthew, we find Joseph represented as the 
son of Jacob, who was the son of Matthan; 
but according to Luke, we find Joseph repre- 
sented as the son of Heli, who was the son 
of Matthat. How can both be correct?’ 
The answer is this: in Matthew, there is 


248 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


traced the genealogy of Joseph, and it is 
thereby proved that the reputed father of 
Christ was of the seed of Abraham and 
David; in Luke, the genealogy of Mary, the 
mother of Christ, is traced, and it is thereby 
shown that by the mother’s side he was of 
the seed of David and the son of Abraham. 
In Luke, be it observed, the words “the 
son” are in italics; that is, they are not in 
the original; and the literal rendering is— 
“ Being, as was supposed”? (or reputed in 
the public tablets,) «the son,’’ but, in reality, 
the son-in-law, “of Heli,’ and so on. In 
the one, you have the genealogy of Joseph; 
in the other, the genealogy of Mary; and 
instead of any collision between the two, 
there is ample proof of that unintended and 
natural harmony, which shows that they 
wrote as they were inspired by the Spirit 
of, God. 

A question has been asked by objectors to 
revelation—“ If Christianity be the boon that 
you represent, why was God so long in dis- 
closing this unsearchable and saving bles- 
sing to the mass of lost mankind?’ Now 
I answer this by asking a few other ques- 
tions; and when the objector has answered 
my questions, it will be time for me to reply 
to his. I ask, Why did the Providence of 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 249 


God allow so many years to transpire, before 
a Howard was found to visit the cells and 
the dungeons of Europe, to lighten and re- 
lieve their miseries? Why did the Provi- 
dence of God allow so long time to elapse, 
before the tongue of a Wilberforce was heard 
within the walls of the senate of England, 
pleading for the African slave? Why did 
Providence suffer so long a period to pass, 
before the West Indian slavery was utterly 
destroyed forever by the senate and the laws 
of Great Britain? Why was vaccination, 
that great discovery of modern times, so long 
in being found out, seeing it is such an alle- 
viation of human disease and such an admir- 
able source of human health? Why were 
so many years allowed to transpire before 
the secret powers of'steam were discovered, 
and man thereby enabled to travel as philan- 
thropists or missionaries, at a velocity, of 
which our forefathers never dreamed? Now 
when the objector has answered all my ques- 
tions, which involve the providence of God, 
then I will answer his question, which seems 
to him to involve the revelation of God.* 


[* Nothing was lost by the delay. The Mediation was 
retrospective in its influence, as well as prospective. ] 
Enrror Pres. Boarp or Pus. 


250 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


Another objection has been drawn from 
the limited spread of Christianity. It is said 
—“<If Christianity be so transcendent a bles- 
sing, why is not the whole world brought un- 
der its saving and its sanctifying power 2” 
Do we not find it to be matter-of-fact in 
almost every other province, and in respect 
to almost every other benefit, that the great- 
est blessings are enjoyed by the few? Do 
we nat find, that literature, which has arisen 
to great height and perfection in England, is 
not known in large portions of Asia and 
Africa? Are not civilization—freedom—the 
national, social, and moral blessings enjoyed, 
and gratefully enjoyed, in England—stran- 
gers to Spain, Italy, and Africa? So that 
when the objector has explained why some 
of our greatest national and social blessings 
are restricted to the few, and not distributed 
among the many, in the providence of God, 
it will be the time for us to explain why 
Christianity is restricted to the few, and not 
extended to the many, in the dispensation of 
the grace of God. The God of Providence 
is chargeable with the results of the first—if 
the God of Grace be with those of the last. 
[I may add, however, that the Gospel pro- 
motes its triumph by moral and spiritual 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 251 


weapons; it appeals to men as possessed of 
judgment, of conscience, and of responsi- 
bility ; and rather than use one weapon in- 
terdicted in the sacred pages, it will wait 
patiently at the door of man’s obdurate heart, 
knocking for admission still, and promising 
still, if he will open the door, the Saviour 
“will come in to him, and will sup with 
him.” 

“ How comes it to pass, if the Bible be a 
revelation of God’s mind, that there are so 
many varieties of opinion about it? The 
Independent draws one conclusion, the Bap- 
tist another, the Presbyterian a third, the 
Episcopalian a fourth, the Socinian a fifth, 
the Roman Catholic a sixth; and why all 
this? If it be a revelation of God’s mind, 
why such varieties of opinion?” Some of 
these are but circumstantial differences. But 
may we not ask why such variety of opinion 
on every subject that comes under the cog- 
nizance of man? If variety of interpreta- 
tion be admitted as a disproof of the excel- 
lence of a document, it will land us in results 
we little expect. Take an Act of Parlia- 
ment, when the House of Commons and the 
House of Lords have successively expended 
their wisdom and their eloquence in discussing 


252 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


it, and the queen has inspected and approved 
it, and set her seal to it; wait for twelve 
months, and we shall find that Chancery is 
full of litigation as to the meaning of that very 
Act of Parliament. And what does this de- 
monstrate? That itis impossible in imperfect 
language to convey ideas so fully, that man’s 
frail judgment may not mistake them, and, 
above all, that man’s guilty heart will not dis- 
tort them. The cause of the litigation is not 
so much that men really experience a diffi. 
culty in forming a right interpretation of the 
Act of Parliament, but that A. wants this 
property or that advantage, and B. also wants 
it; and therefore, pulling in the line of self, 
each will contend for an interpretation favour- 
able to self. 

It is said—*“ But ministers of the Gospel 
do not always live as the Bible prescribes ; 
and if they present not patterns of its pure 
and lofty morality, is it not an evidence that 
they are not in earnest, and that they do not 
believe the Bible?’? But does this disprove 
the Gospel? The minister who preaches in 
the pulpit like an angel, and lives in the 
world like a devil, is the guiltiest man that 
the sun shines upon, or that treads the sur- 
face of the earth. That minister’s preaching, 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 253 


if he preach God’s word, is to be revered, 
but that minister himself is to be shunned if 
he lives in the practice of gross and open 
sin, though he should preach in strains a 
Demosthenes could not rival, or with elo- 
quence an Apollos never reached. But I 
can never allow that the unholy life of any 
minister is a proof that Christianity is not 
right and good. You go to a physician, and 
he writes out a prescription for you, and 
gives you regulation as to diet and regimen 
and habits, as to what you are to eat and 
what you are to drink, and what course is 
the most healthy and most conducive to long 
life. You follow that physician to the dinner 
table or into society, and you find that he 
does not live according to the prescriptions 
and restrictions he has laid upon you; do 
you therefore say, that his prescription is 
wrong? Not at all; you try the prescription 
notwithstanding, and you find it is right, 
though he does not live according to it. So 
say I here; the prescription is good, the 
‘balm in Gilead” is precious, the blood of 
Jesus is worthy to be made known and 
believed holy and free as the air, though all 
the physicians that declare its virtue should 
22 


254 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


lie against it by their lives. Judge the man 
by the word, not the word by the man. 

It is objected that the Gospel has led to 
wars, to impostures, to crimes, and to innu- 
merable mischiefs. Christianity is not justly 
to be charged with the deeds that have been 
done in its sacred, but injured name. Chris- 
tianity is not to be made responsible for the 
fearful deeds of the Inquisition, of Smithfield, 
of the Bartholomew massacre, and of the Si- 
cilian Vespers, all of which it rebukes. These 
sprang from the wickedness of man’s heart, 
and not from Christianity. Nor is it to be 
charged with the wild and extravagant fa- 
naticism of Joanna Southcote and others. 
These were the corrupters and abusers of the 
truth, not its legitimate exponents. The very 
best blessings we possess may be abused. 
Men may blaspheme in their prayers, or talk 
treason in their ordinary conversation, or 
poison each other in their meals; but do we 
therefore infer, that we are not to pray, nor to 
talk, nor to eat? No; we are all too “ wise 
in our generation,” in the things of this 
world. Why, then, so inconsistent in regard 
to the things of a brighter and better world ? 
Why quote man’s abuse as disproof of the 
excellence of God’s gifts? The abuse of any 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 255 


blessing by man is no proof that the blessing 
is not of God. 

It is said, there are mysteries in the sacred 
volume which we cannot understand, and 
therefore it cannot be a revelation from God 
to us. 

True, there are mysteries in the sacred 
volume; but if there had been no mysteries 
in it, the infidel would have said, “ This can- 
not be the inspiration of God; it wants those 
mysterious and incomprehensible features we 
might have expected from a revelation of the 
Infinite.” 

The fact is, that a revelation of the incom- 
prehensible God must contain some mysteries 
not comprehensible by man. The exhibition 
of that which is infinite, unsearchable, and 
immeasurable, must surely be beyond the 
finite and puny understanding of man to ap- 
preciate or comprehend fully. Its mysteries 
are presumptions in its favour. But what 
would you think of a school-boy, if he were 
to say that the Newtonian philosophy is false 
because he cannot comprehend it? Your 
reply would be—“ That philosophy is de- 
monstrated to be true, whether you can 
comprehend it or not, and your present com- 
prehension is no test of its truth or the 


256 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


reverse.” The fault is in the mind, not in 
the subject. Does the infidel meet with no 
mysteries in the world around him? Let 
him explain to me the courses of the stars; 
or in language I can understand, the circula- 
tion of the blood, the pulsation of the heart, 
the effects of volition, or the union that knits 
the soul to its earthly and perishable taber- 
nacle. After he has explained the mysteries 
of a blade of grass or a grain of dust, the 
mysteries of the earth on which he treads, 
the mysteries of the ocean on which he sails, 
the mysteries of the sky on which he looks, 
the mysteries which his own body and his 
own soul contain, it will be time for us to 
explain to him the mysteries of the word of 
God. But if mysteries in creation be no 
proof that God did not make the world, so 
mysteries in revelation can be no proof that 
God did not inspire the Bible. On the con- 
trary, the fact that there are mysteries in it is 
presumptive evidence that it has God for its 
author, as it has truth for its matter and sal- 
vation for its glorious end. Every new truth 
we see come within the horizon is intimately 
related to another, and the more we see the 
more we find remains to be seen. ‘Truth is 
infinite, and our progress will be infinite also. 


| a ee 


oe es 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 257 


You will find, however, that while the 
language that describes and the similes that 
portray the character of God are mysterious 
and inscrutable, the plan and the mode of 
salvation, all that is essential to our salvation, 
are so clear, that the “ wayfaring man’? may 
understand and appreciate them. And if I 
address a reader who objects to Scripture, 
and says he does not relish and understand 
it, let me tell him there was a day when I 
also did not relish the Scripture—when I sat 
down to peruse it because my father and my 
mother told me, but I was weary of it and 
wished it done; nay, there was a day when 
I doubted of its heavenly origin, and it was 
not till I had read treatise after treatise, that 
I came to the conviction, a conviction as 
strong as that there is a God in heaven, that 
this book is the book of God. Our taste 
will be gradually raised to its height by 
perusing it. Untutored taste often fails to 
appreciate first-rate excellence. Blessed, 
blessed be the God who gave such a book to 
poor lapsed and erring man. 

I have no doubt of the conclusion to which 
any man will come, if he will pursue the 
course, first of inquiring,—and it is great 


guilt to decline the trouble of examining a 
22° 


258 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


book which professes to be the book of 
God; It is telling the Almighty that the 
knowledge of Him and the matters of eter- 
nity and the interests of souls are not worthy 
of a moment’s thought,—next going to it in 
the spirit of prayer, saying with David, 
“Oh! send out thy light and thy truth, let 
them lead me and guide me”’—bending your 
knee, proud infidel, in the presence of the 
Searcher of hearts, bowing your spirit before 
Him, asking Him to show you “the way 
and the truth and the life.”? Suppose that 
in some part of this little work you should 
meet with a sentence you do not understand; 
you might apply to some gifted minister or 
critic for an explanation of it, but on failing 
to get satisfaction, you hear that the author 
is living, and is accessible. Would you not 
resolve to apply to Am for a satisfactory ex- 
planation? Now do treat God’s word as 
fairly as you would treat man’s book; go to 
the ever present Author, who “hears in 
heaven His dwelling place;’’? ask Him in 
prayer to teach you the meaning of the 
sacred volume, and He will irradiate that 
volume with noon-day splendor and fill your 
mind with noon-day light. 

The true way of understanding Scripture 


IS THE BIBLE CONTRADICTORY? 259 


is comparing passage with passage, text with 
text. As a diamond can be cut best by 
another diamond, so will one text resolve 
and explain another. Bishop Horsley, one 
of the greatest of critics, has said—“ It were 
to be wished that no Bibles were printed 
without references. Particular diligence 
should be used in comparing the parallel 
texts of the Old and New Testament. It is 
incredible how much scriptural knowledge 
one may acquire without any other commen- 
tary or exposition, than what the different 
parts of the sacred volume mutually furnish 
to each other. Let the most illiterate Chris- 
tian study Scripture in this way, comparing 
text with text, and the whole compass of ab- 
struse philosophy and recondite history shall 
furnish no argument with which the perverse 
will of man shall be able to shake this plain 
Christian’s faith’? You will find this arrange- 
ment admirably executed in Bagster’s Bible. 

There are, however, two lights in which a 
man may read the Scriptures; the light of 
reason, and the light of the Spirit of God. 
Critics and scholars have read them in the 
former light, and passed to that place where— 


“Hope withering flees, and Mercy sighs Farewell.” 
But the illiterate man, who has read them in 


260 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


the light of God’s Spirit, has found in them 
the way to everlasting life. Suppose I were 
to go forth to some lovely landscape in some 
of the most beauteous parts of Scotland, and 
were to look upon it at the hour of midnight, 
while the moon shone full around me, I 
should find it dim and obscure; I could not 
trace the windings of the streamlet, nor dis- 
cern the delicate loveliness of the panorama ; 
not from any defects in the landscape, but 
from defects in the medium through which I 
viewed it. But let me visit it the next day 
at noon, and I shall see every flower with its 
beauteous tints, every streamlet meandering 
towards the ocean, every field in its verdure, 
every forest in its thick and majestic foliage. 
The whole landscape is changed. And why ? 
Because in the hazy light of the moon it 
could not be distinctly seen, but in the full 
light of the sun. everything is clear and visi- 
ble. So it is with this book. Read the 
Bible by the dusky light of reason, and it is 
covered with a film; clouds and darkness 
rest upon it. But bring it with bent knee 
and with broken heart, and place it beneath 
the rays of the Sun of Righteousness; and 
in the clear light of Christ you will clearly 
“ see light.” 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 261 


CHAPTER X. 
DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 


In the former chapter I explained, and tried 
to neutralize the objections which the im- 
pugners of Revelation urge against some of 
the facts and characteristic features of Chris- 
tianity. In this chapter I will endeavour to 
vindicate the peculiar and characteristic doc- 
trines of the Gospel from those objections 
which have been alleged to be fatal to the 
claims of Christianity. 

We admit there are difficulties in some 
parts of sacred writ; but we must not fail to 
recollect, that there is no one science within 
the range of the cognizance of man, in which 
difficulties, and great difficulties, are not 
found; some inexplicable on any known 
principles, and incomprehensible by human 
intellect. Are there no difficulties in medi- 
cine? are there no difficulties in law ? are there 
no perplexities in the occurrences and em- 
ployments of ordinary life? And yet no man 
is so irrational as to infer that there can be 


262 TS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


no truth in medicine, nor in law, nor in history, 
philosophy, or science, because there are 
depths that the plumb line of man’s judgment 
is unable to fathom, and difficulties man’s 
mind cannot explain. There are difficulties, 
we again assert, in sacred writ: and if there 
were no such difficulties there, so vast that 
my puny mind must fail and sink when it tries 
to grasp and comprehend them, I should say 
there was a strong a@ priori presumption that 
the book was not from God. I must believe, 
a priori that a revelation from God will con- 
tain depths that we cannot fathom, heights 
that we cannot climb, intimations and thoughts 
from afar we are unable to bring clearly with- 
in the horizon of our minds; that it will be 
like the waters seen by Ezekiel—in some 
parts reaching to the ancles, in some parts to 
the knees, in some parts to the middle, and 
in others “waters to swim in, a river that 
could not be passed over.” In the language 
of one who has well described the sacred 
volume, “There are shallows in it where 
lambs may wade, and depths in it where 
elephants may swim.”’ 


One of the doctrines of sacred writ fre- 
quently cavilled at, is the doctrine of the 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES, 263 


Trinity. We hold—and all who are worthy 
of the name of Christian hold—that there is 
one living and true God, and yet that there 
is what is called in the language of theology 
the Trinity—that is, three persons, (the word 
person is perhaps the fullest English render- 
ing of the Greek trocrac;) though but one 
God. 

Now if it be asked, Can you explain this? 
—l answer, No. Can you comprehend this? 
—I answer, No. But if you add, Do you 
not then reject this?—I answer, No. Such 
an inference must lead to universal Pyrrhon- 
ism. ‘There are mysteries in every beating 
heart, mysteries in every blade of grass; but 
if the incomprehensible nature of facts in any 
history, or science, or providence, be admitted 
as arguments against the science to which 
they severally belong, we must necessarily 
be plunged in universal scepticism, as well as 
hurried into an abyss of downright absurdity. 
The Bible asserts plainly that the Father is 
God; it asserts as plainly that the Son is 
God; it asserts as plainly that the Holy 
Spirit is God; and yet it repeats and reite- 
rates at the very same moment, and with the 
implied clear recollection of all its separate 
announcements, that there is but one living 


264 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


and true God, to whom the name of Triune 
Jehovah is exclusively applicable. The Scrip- 
ture announces it asa truth, just as nature 
evolves a fact; a truth interwoven with our 
salvation, but inexplicable to our judgment. 
But let me ask the mere theist, the man 
who merely admits the existence of a God, 
will he escape in his supposed simplicity of 
creed all such inexplicable mysteries? He 
will not. What can he make of omnipo- 
tence ? what can he understand of omnipre- 
sence? what can he grasp of omniscience ? 
We cannot understand or comprehend these 
attributes. It is very well to talk of omni- 
presence as an axiom; but what can we 
conceive of a Being here and yet there, in 
England and yet in India, present in every 
spot through the vast infinitude of space? 
What can we comprehend of a Being eter- 
nally existent ; so that when he have added 
millions and millions upon millions more of 
years, we have not reached His age, nor 
measured the duration of His being, nor 
arrived nearer the end, nor remoter from the 
beginning? What can we know of eternity ? 
Literally nothing ; it is perfectly incompre- 
hensible ; it isan unsearchable depth. And 
if the fact that the Trinity is incomprehen- 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES, 265 


sible leads you to reject revelation, the fact 
that eternity, omniscience, omnipresence, attri- 
butes you must clothe your God withal, are 
also incomprehensible, will lead you to deny 
the existence of a God; and the deist will 
land at last in the extreme where difficulties 
are multiplied, not diminished, the monstrous 
extreme at which all nature shudders—that 
We are a family without a father, and in- 
habit a world without a Creator. 

The Trinity is not a contradiction, but a 
truth partly luminous—as luminous as our 
vision can bear, and as largely so as our com- 
prehension can grasp. It is a truth dis- 
tinctly told, but not explained—it is a reve- 
lation, but not an analysis. It is so plainly 
declared that we can easily see what it is, 
but not how itis. There is enough told for 
our salvation, and none for our curiosity— 
enough for Christians in the closet, the sanc- 
tuary, and the death-bed; but none for phi- 
losophers in the Stoa, the Lyceum, or the 
schools. 

There is another doctrine, which has been 
the subject of the scorn of the infidel; name- 
ly, predestination, or election. The Scrip- 
tures assert, in the plainest terms, that 
“whom God did foreknow, He also did 

23 


266 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


predestinate to be conformed to the image 
of His Son;” and again, “He hath chosen 
us before the foundation of the world,” not 
because we were holy, but “that we should be 
holy.’ If these passages are admitted to be 
in the Bible (and I might quote many such), 
there can be no question that predestination 
is a Scripture doctrine. 

Now it is delightful to every dispassionate 
inquirer, that here the theology of the Bible 
and the findings of the highest metaphysics 
exactly coincide. In that great work, the 
treatise on the Freedom of the Will, by Jona- 
than Edwards, the most acute of metaphy- 
sicians, we see it proved by principles of pure 
philosophical investigation, that predestina- 
tion or moral necessity is a truth. 

But, with mystery yet without contrariety, 
the Scriptures assert, that we are free agents ; 
that we are responsible for our belief, our 
practice, our reception or rejection of the 
‘claims and tenets of Christianity. But the 
infidel asks—How do you reconcile these? 
You say that we are predestinated, or elect, 
and yet you say that we are free agents. I 
do assert both; and why ?—because the Bible 
distinctly reveals both. On one page it pro- 
claims, “No man can come to me, unless the 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 267 


Father which hath sent me draw him;” 
here is God’s sovereignty. On another page 
“Ye will not come to me, that ye might 
have life ;”? here is man’s responsibility. If 
you ask me, How do you reconcile these >— 
I answer, That is not my province. I am 
not called upon to reconcile, but to receive, 
revealed truths. The two truths are dis- 
tinctly announced. In their contact only 
does mystery evolve. The one teaches me 
my responsibility, and the other the necessity 
of Divine help. I can act, and look, and 
learn, where I cannot reconcile. I have 
proved this book to be an emanation from 
God, and this book asserts alike the election 
of God and the responsibility of man How 
they are reconciled, I cannot demonstrate, but 
that they are reconcilavle, I have not a doubt 
the light of another world will clearly dis- 
close. The defect is not in these truths, but 
in my understanding. A true philosopher 
will never reject facts and phenomena in the - 
natural world because he cannot reconcile 
them; and a true Christian will not reject 
doctrines revealed in the Bible for the same 
reason. Let a person discover one fact in 
science, and then a second fact, which he 
cannot harmonize or reconcile or explain 


268 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


consistently with the first; he does not say, 
«‘T will now reject or disbelieve one or both 
of these facts;’? but he says, “I will lay 
them up in my memory, and subsequent 
light and maturer investigation may lead me 
to detect harmony, where at present I dis- 
cover only discord”? Now let us treat the 
Bible in the same way. Receive facts and 
doctrines as they are here declared. Let the 
first and great question be, whether these 
doctrines be in the Bible; if they are, we are 
to wait till time shall harmonize those that 
seemingly differ—not to reject one or both 
because we cannot at present explain or 
comprehend them. 

I see the two ends of the chain near and 
luminous, each indicating a plain and obvi- 
ous duty. Let me not forget these duties in 
unprofitable attempts to trace out the myste- 
rious intermediate links that connect them. 

Another proposition in the Scriptures fre- 
“quently objected to, is the incarnation of 
Christ. The infidel asks, How can you sup- 
pose that we rational beings will believe that 
God was man, and yet that man was God; 
or that God came into our nature and suf- 
fered death upon the cross, was crucified as 
a malefactor, and buried as a criminal? We 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 269 


answer, the true question is first, Is God’s 
word truth; and next, are these things 
asserted in it? If they are plainly revealed 
there, it is not our province, as it may not be 
In our power, to harmonize or reconcile 
them. It is our duty, as it is also our 
privilege, to receive, to believe, to rest upon 
them. 

In the Bible this great doctrine is plainly 
stated; to our minds it is as plainly incom- 
prehensible how the finite and infinite could 
coalesce—how Deity and humanity could be 
in his sufferings, how the deepest capacity 
of temptation and entire impossibility of 
being overcome—how want and_ fulness, 
Strength and weakness, ignorance of “that 
day and hour” and yet omniscience, could 
be together. The great fact is clearly written 
—the mode of its existence is all mystery. 

But the idea of the incarnation is not so 
unnatural and unanticipated by man as_ 
many are disposed to think. The ancient 
heathen entertained a kindred notion. Many 
of their philosophers believed that God was 
the soul of the world, and the universe the 
visible incarnation of God. They believed in 
what we might call the materialization of 
God. The Hindoos at this moment enter- 

23 * 


270 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


tain an idea that approximates most closely 
to this, viz.—the incarnation of their Vishnu, 
or deity. Thus reason in its progress has 
touched the skirts and caught some beam of 
the glory of revelation, and risen unaided to 
some notion very much akin to the incarnation. 
This great doctrine of the Scriptures is there- 
by proved to be not so unlikely or so con- 
trary to man’s notions that it ought to be 
rejected at the first blush. True, no logic of 
“man can reconcile the fact, that He who 
wept on Olivet, was He also who reigned in 
heaven; that He whe bled upon the cross, 
was He who sat upon the throne; that He 
who cried, “My God, my God, why hast 
thou forsaken me?”?—was He who “said, 
Let there be light, and there was light;’’ 
that the infant sleeping in the manger was 
“the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the 
Prince of peace.”? But though we cannot 
harmonize these infinite facts, yet we can re- 
ceive them as the most glorious truths that 
were ever breathed into the ear or poured 
into the heart of poor humanity. For what 
is Christ? He is just the meeting-place—or, 
as the old Scottish writers would have called 
it, the ¢rysting place—between heaven and 
earth; he is the filler up of the tremendous 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES, 271 


chasm that sin made between God and man 
—the sacred and holy spot, where man can 
meet God notwithstanding all his sins, and 
where God can meet man and yet be a holy 
and righteous God; He is that sacred isth- 
mus between eternity and time, washed by 
the one and unwasted by the other, within 
the precincts of which heaven and earth coa- 
lesce in glorious and indissoluble harmony, 
and over which God appears “just and yet 
the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.’’ 
Though we cannot descend to the fathomless 
glory of this great truth, yet we can see the 
practical and precious results that flow from 
the admission of it. 

The idolatry of ancient nations was just 
man’s mind struggling after something like 
the incarnation. Man had lost God in con- 
sequence of sin, and he so felt it. It then 
became his effort to bring God down to him, 
seeing he could not rise to God; and in order 
to do so, he represented Him by stones, by 
wood, by gold and silver, and such like cor- 
ruptible things; making the imaginary like- 
ness a substitute for the original. This was 
man’s anticipation, as it were, of an incarna- 
tion—it was nature’s rude presentiment of 
Christianity—creation’s throes and groans for 


272 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


the manifestation of God. And when Christ 
came, He abolished for ever the necessity 
and made more obvious the guilt of all 
material personations of God, by presenting 
in Himself “the brightness of the Father’s 
glory and the express image of His person.” 

Again; it has been contended, that the 
idea of satisfaction made to God for sin, or 
the necessity of Christ’s dying in order that 
God might forgive sinners, is contrary to the 
reason and understanding of man, and incon- 
sistent with such notions of the true God as 
we are able by nature to attain. Now, the 
first question upon this, as upon every other 
doctrine, is—Is the doctrine revealed in 
Scripture? All revelation distinctly testifies, 
that Christ died “the just in the room of the 
unjust, that He might bring us to God ”— 
that we are “redeemed by the blood of the 
Lamb ;’’ in fact, all the phraseology that 
was applied to the sacrificial offerings of the 
Jews, is distinctly and emphatically applied 
to the perfect atonement and the sacrifice of 
Christ Jesus. 

God demanded this satisfaction, not be- 
cause He had any pleasure in suffering, or 
any delight in death; the very reverse. It 
was not the atonement that was the cause of 


a 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 278 


God’s love, but God’s love that was the cause 
of the atonement. We can perceive no other 
way according to which God could be true 
and just and holy, and yet save the chiefest 
of sinners. If God had relaxed all the penal- 
ties of His law, that law which is not a mere 
arbitrary enactment, but the essential, ever 
obligatory, and eternal expression of His 
mind, and will, and nature—if He had admit- 
ted sinners into heaven without any satisfac- 
tion, or atonement, or visible vindication of 
His character—then Satan’s word would have 
been true; Satan’s policy would have tri- 
umphed; God’s word would have been prov- 
ed false, and omnipotence overcome. God’s 
assertion was—“In the day that thou eatest 
thereof, thou shalt surely die ;” Satan’s asser- 
tion was—“ Ye shall not surely die.” Which 
was to be proved true? If God had admit- 
ted to the blessings of His glory the men that 
broke the rescripts of His law, Satan’s pre- 
diction would have been proved to be true, 
and God’s proclamation would have been 
proved to be false. It therefore became 
necessary, as far as we can see, that God 
should save sinners in such a way as would 
show Him the same just, the same holy, the 
same true God, as if all sinners had been 


274 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


eternally banished from his presence; and 
yet the same merciful and loving God, as if 
all creatures had been universally reclaimed. 
We therefore see a moral necessity for the 
atonement of Christ. We cannot see how 
God could have been enthroned in the supre- 
macy of holy and universal empire, unless 
by such a process as that which is revealed 
in the Scriptures 

Moreover, if God had admitted sinners 
into heaven without any exhibition of His 
hatred of sin, what would other worlds or 
created intelligences probably have con- 
cluded? What would the inhabitants of 
other stars have said? They must have con- 
cluded—*“ This God is not the holy God we 
imagined; He winks at sin; He pronounces 
threats merely as make-believes ; He has in- 
deed a law, but it is a law which we may 
break with impunity.”” The universe would 
have been disorganized; God would have 
been virtually dethroned. Such a God could 
not have been the God revealed in the Bible. 
He cannot thus let down His law, and be in- 
dulgent, that is, unjust and unholy, in deal- 
ing with the sins of mankind. The idea of 
a God without an atonement pardoning sin- 
ners, suggests such perplexities as these. 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 275 


Will God equally pardon all sinners? The 
mere theist must answer, No. Will He then 
equally punish all sinners? The theist must 
also answer, No. How low will His justice 
descend in punishing, and how high will His 
love rise in rewarding? Without the light 
of revelation we are driven to form an idea 
of Deity which implies a composite of im- 
perfections; a God imperfectly just in order 
to be benevolent, and imperfectly benevolent 
in order to be just. 

But, say some, would it not have been 
better if God had prevented sin altogether, 
instead of permitting it, and then taking this 
seemingly round-about way to annihilate and 
forgive it? We might answer, in the first 
place—If the fact be plainly revealed in God’s 
book, “who art thou that repliest against 
God ?”’ 

But the very same objection that is thus 
made to the introduction of sin and sin’s 
curse, may be made with equal force to all 
that occurs in the world around us. Is not 
the whole system of the world a system of 
permitted wrong-doing and of merciful re- 
pairing ; a system of disease and of cure; a 
system of suffering and of amendment; a 
system of pain and of subsequent pleasure ? 


276 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


If the suffered introduction of evil tells 
against God’s book of revelation, will not the 
suffered action of it tell against God’s provi- 
dence? Why has God permitted disease 
and pain, and suffering and distress, instead 
of preventing them? Why allow them to 
be, and then take a round-about way to 
repair and amend them ? 

In what way could God have prevented 
sin from coming into the world? Man was 
made a free agent—responsible—without any 
bias to sin or to wickedness. If God had 
restrained Adam by physical coercion, man 
would not have been a free and responsible 
being. He was left to the freedom of his 
own will, with a bias to holiness, and yet he 
rebelled and revolted against God. 

An archangel fell. Could man stand? 
May it not be true that in Christ only can 
the universe stand? that redemption, not cre- 
ation, is the only platform on which man or 
seraph can abide in holiness? May not the 
permitted fall have been only a preliminary 
to the perfect redemption ? 

It has been asserted, in the next place, that 
the system of mediation and of a Mediator 
revolts against all ourexperience. This is but 
the following out of the same objection. But 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 277 


is the system of a Mediator between God 
and man not in accordance with the findings 
of human experience, and the analogies of 
human nature? We believe it is in beauti- 
ful harmony with the works and ways of 
God, discoverable elsewhere, that the provi- 
sion of a Mediator between God and man is 
only the addition of a kindred link to the 
chain of mediation that girds the world and 
upholds creation around us. For instance ; 
when the mother brings her infant into the 
world, and nurses and tends it at her breast, 
what is that mother, but, in a sense, a media- 
trix towards that infant? When a man by 
accident, or in the practice of sin, breaks a 
bone of his body, we find that nature gives 
out at the fractured part a substance (the 
name of which I know not,) and commences 
a process of mediation, by which the loss is 
supplied, the fracture healed, and the limb 
restored. Or if a sinew in the human frame 
is cut, nature begins immediately a process 
of mediation at the divided part, repairs the 
breach, and heals the wound. What is this, 
but mediation in our families and mediation 
in our corruptible bodies? We thus see 
mediation going on in nature ; and if nature 
mediates in man’s body, shall God be forbid- 
24 


278 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


den to mediate in man’s soul? If nature 
heals the wounds that take place in the one, 
by a mediatory process, shall it be thought 
incongruous in God to restore that union 
between the soul and God, which has been 
broken and interrupted by sin, by the inter- 
position of a Mediator who shall lay one 
hand on the throne of God, and the other on 
the crushed, broken, and guilty heart of man, 
and bind both into one? ‘Thus creation 
bears aflinities to revelation, and both indi- 
cate a common Author so truly, that he who 
admits the one, cannot, without inconsistency, 
reject the other. 

Do we not see the very same process illus- 
trated in providence? What is an asylum, 
provided by the benevolence of the charita- 
ble for the relief and healing of the wounded 
and the sick, but a sort of mediatorial in- 
stitution? What was the apostle, but a 
sort of mediator in his place? What is 
the missionary, but a sort of mediator in 
his toils? And what has been the history 
of the world, but a history of mediation— 
the “father sowing in tears,’ the “children 
reaping in joy’’—the forefathers bearing 
the brunt of battle, the tumult of the storm, 
and we, the children, reaping the laurels 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 279 


of peace, the sunshine, and the calm? Thus 
every man is in one sense a mediator; 
and all that we have to admit, in order to 
admit the mediation of the gospel, is, that 
there is the addition of a new and more glo- 
rious link to this chain which wraps the 
world and connects together all its tenantry 
—a link that binds the sinner to his Saviour, 
the creature to his Creator, lost man to his 
reconciled God. 

In the next place, it has been objected by 
the infidel, that if there be, as astronomy 
teaches us, thousands and thousands more 
of worlds, it seems altogether inconsistent 
with just views of the character of God and 
of the vastness of His empire, that He should 
be so much interested in this petty world, 
which is but as a grain of sand in comparison 
with the thousands that fill infinite space; 
that He should be so taken up with it, that 
He should come and be incarnate and die in 
it, when there are thousands of orbs a thou- 
sand times bigger and more worthy of and 
entitled to our Creator’s care. To this I re- 
ply as before, that the same Bible which 
gives the clearest proofs of the moral glory 
of God, declares it to have been so; were 
there no explanations satisfactory to our 


280 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


minds, the simple announcement of the fact 
on God’s authority would be enough. 

But do we not find, in this world, that a 
king selects a particular spot, it may be but 
a little corner of his empire, to be the lesson- 
book in which all the rest of his subjects 
may read political, moral, and social lessons? 
And may not this earth, minute as it may be, 
amid the countless orbs that fill the infinitude 
of space, be that consecrated corner, in which 
the King eternal has engraven in characters 
that shall live for ever the lessons of His ho- 
liness, His justice, His mercy, and His truth? 
May not this earth be that living and legible 
tablet, from which there beams forth “ Glory 
to God in the highest, and on earth peace,’’ 
in important and precious lessons to thou- 
sands and thousands more of worlds that are 
around it? As there are worlds beyond 
worlds infinitely, may not scenes visible on 
earth reach these worlds in succession? 
Light would travel from the earth to the 
sun in four minutes. There may be worlds 
so much more remote from the sun, that — 
Calvary may just now be visible to their in- 
habitants, whose organs see as many millions 
of miles as we do inches, : | 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES, 281 


The analogies of our experience in another 
way bear out the proposition, that God should 
thus have regard to this little world amid the 
thousands that are around it. Ifa shepherd 
have lost one sheep, doth he not, in the beau- 
tiful words of our Lord, “leave the ninety 
and nine, and go after that which is lost until 
he find it?’??—and when he has found it, he 
rejoices over it with more joy than over the 
ninety and nine that remained in their fold. 
Or, to vary the lesson, if a mother has a 
family of many children, and if one has gone 
astray—if he has gone to distant lands, or is 
on the far-off bosom of the deep—is it not 
true, that every gale that blows, every surge 
that dashes, every messenger that comes 
from abroad, awakens more anxiety in that 
mother’s heart, than all her children that 
never wandered or strayed from home? and 
does she not exert more efforts to restore and 
expend more anxieties upon the safety of 
that one wandering child, than upon all the 
rest who have been ever with her at her fire- 
side? Thus do we find the analogies of our 
experience in perfect consonance with the 
disclosures of sacred writ. This world is the 
strayed star, that has gone far away from the 
Sun of Righteousness ; and God has come 

24 


282 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


after it, in the mightiness of His mercy, to 
reclaim and to restore it. Man is the prodi- 
gal child, that has left his Father’s house, and 
wasted his substance in riotous living; and 
God has gone after him, to recover him and 
to bring him home; and the accents of joy 
have filled high heaven, because the lost one 
is found, the dead at length is once more 
alive. 

_ It is in vain for infidels and others to bring 
objections against the Gospel from the disclo- 
sures of astronomy; for the more we examine 
the facts of this science, the more do we find 
it bear out the great truths contained in the 
Gospel. Not only do its facts confirm, but 
its disclosures illustrate the truths of Chris- 
tianity. Sir Isaac Newton, the wisest of hu- 
man philosophers and the greatest of human 
intellects, discovered that the same law of 
gravitation keeps a planet in its orbit and 
regulates the pendulum of a common clock; 
that the same law that determines the path 
of a planet, determines the fall of a feather or 
a leaf also. Now may not this show a new 
analogy between astronomy and revelation? 
There is that in the Gospel, which corres- 
ponds to gravitation. It is the love of God. 
It is the gravitation of Christianity. This 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 283 


love of God retains the orphan in his allegi- 
ance, the saint in his attachment, the angel 
in his place, aud the hierarch in his holiness 
before and around the throne. The same 
principle that binds the sinner to his God, 
binds also the archangel to his Creator. 
Gravitation is in the material world, what 
love to God is in the moral and spiritual 
world. It may be found by yet deeper dis- 
coveries, that astronomy, instead of impugn- 
ing revelation, will peal from star to star that 
Christianity is truth, and all true science, like 
all redeemed things, shall eventually bow 
the knee to Jesus and acknowledge Him; 
and its Newtons and its Laplaces, reluc- 
tantly or willingly, do homage to the Lamb 
that sitteth on the throne. 

It has been said by objectors to revelation, 
that all the experience of man is against the 
idea of a resurrection of the body. We 
maintain, on the contrary, that all experience 
is decidedly in favour of such a hereafter 
existence to man. Look, for instance, at the 
unattractive insect that lies upon the blade 
of grass or upon the cabbage leaf; and ina 
few short days you find that insect floating 
in the air, in all the beauteous colours of the 
rainbow. Look at the dry root in the 


284 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


gloomy season of winter; and when spring 
comes forth, you find that root bloom into a 
beauteous rose. Look at the egg-shell; in 
that there is the eagle, that is to wing its 
flight above all other birds, and rivet its eye 
upon the meridian sun. The doctrine of the 
resurrection is not inconsistent with the analo- 
gies of nature or the experience of our com- 
mon history. 

It has been alleged, that it is contrary to 
our experience that the soul should live 
separate from the body. We say, on the 
other hand, that it is consonant, not contrary 
to it. As well might you say, when you see 
the candle burning in the lantern, that be- 
cause you see that candle in the lantern only, 
therefore it cannot burn out of it. Because 
you see the chicken in the egg-shell, would 
you say it cannot live out of the egg-shell ? 
Would you say, because the child must be 
in continuity with its mother before it is born, 
therefore after it is born it cannot live sepa- 
rate from its mother? Such is the reasoning 
of the man who would say, because he 
knows of the soul in the body only, there- 
fore there is a presumption that the soul will 
never live out of the body. 

It is said, again, by those who impugn 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 285 


revelation, that all Divine influence from 
above exerted on man, or the residence of 
the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers, is 
incredible. Kirby, in his Bridgewater Trea- 
tise, has asserted, that instinct even in ani- 
mals is a direct emanation from the Deity ; 
and if this should be so, is it not proof that 
Divine influence is not contrary to our expe- 
rience or impossible? What does the load- 
stone teach? what enables it to direct the 
mariner upon the stormy deep, and to guide 
him in his course by pointing towards the 
pole? An influence given it from above. 
Study the hop-plant; if there is no pole to 
support it when it springs up, it spreads 
along the ground as if in search of one, and 
on a pole being placed near it, it moves 
more rapidly in that direction, clings to it as 
in ecstasy, and grows with double speed, as 
if to reimburse itself for delay, and rejoice 
that it has found its support. Is not this an 
influence given it for its preservation? Or I 
take you to the sunflower, that inclines its 
-plossom ever to the sun in his daily course. 
What is this but a sort of Divine influence 
imparted even to the vegetables? And if the 
hop is thus enabled by some mysterious im- 
pulse to cling to the pole that supports it, 


286 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


shall it be thought inconsistent with our 
experience, that man’s sinking soul shall be 
taught and drawn by the Spirit of God to 
cling to the Rock of ages, the Rod of Jesse, 
the Lord Jesus Christ ? 

It has been objected, that there appears in 
the revelations of Scripture a disproportion 
between sin and the punishment of sin here- 
after, and that this disproportion is so palpa- 
ble that it revolts against all the experience 
and the analogies of nature. It is not in our 
judgment contrary to the experience and 
the analogies of nature. Sin against God is 
of infinite demerit. For instance; if an equal 
strike an equal, it is a great offence; if a sol- 
dier strike his superior officer, it is a greater 
offence ; if a subject strike his king, it is held 
in human law to bea still greater offence ; 
so that the principle is in our experience 
admitted, that the offence rises in aggrava- 
tion according to the dignity of the person 
against whom it is perpetrated. Who, then, 
is prepared to deny, that man’s sin against 
an infinite God may not rise to the amount 
of an infinite offence? Who shall determine 
the extent and measure of the analogy you 
sanction? Who is prepared to prove, since 
sin rises in aggravation according to the dig- 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 287 


nity of him against whom it is committed, 
that it may not rise to an infinite turpitude 
when committed against an infinite God, and 
thus justly merit infinite retribution ? 
Moreover we see even a small offence 
actually lead to a very heavy punishment. 
A single rash or false word may lead to mis- 
chiefs, that centuries cannot repair; and here 
is surely a disproportion between the offence 
and the penalty, even in the dealings of Pro- 
vidence, and in our experience in this world. 
A sober man begins to drink, and to indulge 
in habits of intoxication; and the conse- 
quence of the apparently trifling act, his tak- 
ing so many glasses of alcohol, are, that his 
family are starving, his character is blasted, 
his body is diseased, and his soul probably 
lost. So that we see, in this world, what 
seems to be a trivial offence followed by a 
punishment to us apparently disproportioned. 
In the next place, it has been contended, that 
Christianity itself states, that the learned, and 
the wise, and the great, are not generally pro- 
fessors of its faith, and do not admit its truth 
and its inspiration of God. We answer, that 
it does indeed say that “not many wise men 
are called,’ but it is men “wise in their 
own conceit ;”? “not.many mighty, not many 


288 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


noble,” if this passage refer to private be- 
lievers—but it is chiefly those who believe 
themselves so. And the experience of its 
truths in the heart, is different from believing 
them in the mind. It is fact, however, that 
the very élite of human intellect, the lights 
and the ornaments of the human race, have 
been devout and faithful followers of the 
Lamb of God. Need I tell you, that New- 
ton, the first genius in astronomy, was a 
devout and a praying Christian ? that Milton, 
whose name ranks highest in the fields of 
poesy, was a humble Christian? that Locke, 
the greatest of metaphysicians, was a most 
devoted Christian? that Euler and Kepler, 
and other most distinguished names, that 
have shed a halo upon the world through 
which they passed by their vast and splendid 
discoveries, were devout and sincere Chris- 
tians? And though it be true that we are 
not to believe Christianity because great 
men have believed it, though it be true that 
we are “not to call any man Master,’’ yet 
may we rest assured, when such men, after 
patient research, come to the conclusion that 
the Bible is the word of God, it becomes us 
moderate men at most to pause before we 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES, 289 


reject what their gifted minds received on 
their competent and sufficient investigation. 
It has been asserted, further, that the lead- 
ing doctrine of Christianity—justification by 
faith alone-—leads to immorality. This is an 
objection of the infidel and Roman Catholic 
together. Our reply to it is, that the same 
Bible, which tells us that we are “justified 
by faith without the deeds of the law,” tells 
us also that “ without holiness no man shall 
see the Lord ;” the same book that declares 
that morality is useless as a plea, tells us it is 
essential as an evidence; that same book that 
tells us that morality cannot be admitted to 
constitute our right to heaven, yet declares 
that morality is essential to constitute our 
qualification for heaven; the same book 
that tells us that we are justified freely 
through the death of Christ Jesus, tells us 
also that this grace “teaches us to deny 
ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live 
soberly, righteously, and godly in this present 
world.”? And the man, be he minister or be 
he hearer, who does not adorn, in his life, in 
his practice, in his conduct, in his intercourse 
in the world, the gospel he professes, knows 
nothing about justification by Christ in his 
25 


290 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


heart, whatever he may know about it in his 
head. 

But we contend that this doctrine is pre- 
eminently calculated to produce morality. 
Man, it is universally admitted, is a sinner ; 
he hates God, and breaks his law. Now 
what does this book declare to be the fulfill- 
ing of the law, or the very essence of obedi- 
ence? Love. If I love my queen, it neces- 
sarily prompts me to be loyal to her; if I 
Jove my parents, that sustains filial duty ; and 
if I love my God, I have in that love the 
very essence and element of obedience to his 
commands. “Love is the fulfilling of the 
law.’? The question, then, is, Does this doc- 
trine of free acceptance through the blood of 
Christ, produce love in man’s heart to God? 
If it does, obedience is eminently secured. 
We answer, it does. If some individual 
hated me, and I were to command that indi- 
vidual to love me, he would not love me 
because I commanded him; or if I were to 
promise him rank and wealth he would not 
Jove me; or if I were to threaten him with 
all sorts of tortures at my service he would 
not love me. Love, in the human heart, 
cannot be created by threatenings, it scorns 
promises, and laughs at all commands. How, 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 291 


then, am I to make that man love me? IfI 
were to make some extraordinary sacrifice, 
risk my property or my life for that man, that 
would draw him irresistibly to forego his 
hatred and to love me. My manifested love 
to him would create returning love to me. 
Now just so here. God may command, 
threaten, or promise, but the sinner will not 
love Him; He, therefore, according to what 
we find to be the soundest philosophy, as 
well as scriptural divinity, has evoked our 
love by the surest process—“God so loved 
the world that He gave his only-begotten 
Son,” who came into our world, and died 
upon the cross for us, and now with His 
pierced and outstretched hands He asks, Sin- 
ner, sinner dost thou not love Me? There 
is in that demonstration a power to melt 
man’s hard heart that has been felt by mil- 
lions; and “we love Him because He first 
loved us.’’ 

To produce the intensest love is to secure 
the highest obedience. “Eye-service”’ will 
create a partial obedience, interest will secure 
a temporary obedience, but love will secure 
perfect and unvaried obedience—an obedi- 
ence that shrinks from no difficulties, that 
pauses at no duties, that overcomes all threats, 


292 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


and triumphs over all opposition. Such is 
the force of love. We have heard of a 
Codrus, whose love to his country led him to 
die for it. We have heard of a Romulus, 
and a Quintus Curtius, who prompted by this 
mighty impulse, could brave death in its 
most appalling shapes. We have heard of 
parents who encountered the wild billow and 
the dread storm to save their children. Love 
in one cherished to another, will accomplish 
what no principle or power can prompt to. 
In Scotland a peasant woman had a child a 
few weeks old, which was seized by one of 
the golden eagles, the largest in the country, 
and borne away in its talons to its lofty eyrie 
on one of the most inaccessible cliffs of Scot- 
land’s bleak hills. The mother, perceiving her 
loss, hurried in alarm to its rescue, and the pea- 
santry, among whom the alarm spread, rushed 
out to her aid. They all came to the foot of 
the tremendous precipice; the peasants were 
anxious to risk their lives in order to re- 
cover the little infant; but how was the crag 
to be reached? One peasant tried to climb, 
but was obliged to return; another tried, and 
came down injured; a third tried, and one 
after another failed, till a universal feeling of 
despair and deep sorrow fell upon the crowd 
as they gazed upon the eyrie where the 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 293 


infant lay. At last a woman was seen, 
climbing first one part, and then another, 
getting over one rock, and then another; and 
while every heart trembled with alarm, to 
the amazement of all they saw her reach the 
loftiest crag, and clasp the infant rejoicingly 
in her bosom. This heroic female began to 
descend the perilous steep with the child; 
moving from point to point; and while every 
one thought that her next step would pre- 
cipitate her and dash her to pieces, they saw 
her at length reach the ground with the child 
safe in her arms. Who was this female ? 
why did she succeed when others failed? It 
Was THE MOTHER Of the child. And what 
made her overcome every obstacle? There 
was a tie between that mother’s heart and 
the infant, that drew her to its place, and 
nerved her to brave every difficulty, and to 
succeed where all beside had failed. It was 
love. The fact is a proof of its might and 
its capabilities. Implant love to God in the 
sinner’s heart, and it will bind him with fer- 
vour to His laws, and its possessor will obey 
all righteousness, love every holy precept, 
overcome every difficulty, and brave all dan- 
gers, It is the tie that binds him to his 
Saviour, and draws him irresistibly to His 


service. Are not they the holiest who trust 
25* 


P 


294 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


least in the merit of their works? Is not 
that country most moral where justification 
by faith is proclaimed most freely ? 
It has been alleged by infidels, that Chris- 
tianity as a whole is one great system of 
priestcraft, and gain, and priestly domination. 
This is one of the favourite charges of the 
more vulgar infidels. We are to take our 
conception of the Christian priesthood, not 
from what we see in the world, but from 
God’s inspired word. If this book says, that 
ministers are to prey on the property of their 
flocks, or to indulge in carnal pleasures, or 
to be “lords over God’s heritage,” then the 
objection may be fatal; but if this sacred 
book proclaims the very reverse, then such 
objection is, not to Christianity as it is found 
in its recognized standard, but to Christianity 
as it has been diluted and corrupted by man. 
I look, then, for the delineation of a minister 
as it is drawn in the word of God. Here it 
is:—“Flee also youthful lusts, but follow 
righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them 
that call on the Lord out ofa pure heart; but 
foolish and unlearned questions avoid, know- 
ing that they do gender strifes, and the ser- 
vant of the Lord must not strive, but be 
gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in 
meekness instructing those that oppose them- 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 295 


selves, if God peradventure will give them re- 
pentance to the acknowledging of the truth.” 
And again; “A bishop”? (and the word is 
used convertibly with “presbyter,” the two 
words being synonymous in the usages of 
the New Testament,)—“A bishop then must 
be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigi- 
lant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospi- 
tality, apt to teach; not given to wine, no 
striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but pa- 
tient; not a brawler, not covetous: one that 
ruleth well his own house, having his chil- 
dren in subjection with all gravity. More- 
over he must have a good report of them 
which are without; lest he fall into reproach 
and the snare of the devil. Likewise must 
the deacons be grave, not double-tongued, 
not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy 
lucre; holding the mystery of the faith in 
a pure conscience.”” These are not descrip- 
tions of a system of priestcraft; these verses 
do not say that Christian ministers are to be 
greedy and domineering. 

Let me add, that the very men who would 
keep back every thing approaching pecuniary 
competency to the clergy, are the men who 
do not object to extravagance in other things, 
They will expend ten times as much upon 
an article of furniture, or pleasure, or dress, as 


296 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


they pay for a pew in the house of God for 
twice twelve months; they will give freely 
as much for a box at the opera for a single 
night, as for a seat at a hundred sermons and 
services. Nota fiftieth part of what is ex- 
pended on unnecessary luxuries and mere 
amusements is given to the missionary box, 
or to the cause of Christ. 

And now, in concluding these replies to 
objections urged against Christianity, let me 
state what in my conscience I believe, as 
well as what in my experience I have found, 
to be the cause, I do not say of ad/, but cer- 
tainly of most men’s infidelity :—their infi- 
delity is the offspring of the heart, not of the 
head.* No jury ata trial, no judge examin- 
ing the merits of a case and finding it proved, 
has such overwhelming evidence for the ver- 
dict of the one, or the sentence of the other, 
as we have for the truth of the word of God. 
Of all evidence it is the most accumulated 
and powerful; and the man who rejects the 
Bible, not only shuts his eyes to noon-day 
brightness, but to be consistent, ought to 
reject almost every thing that constitutes the 
sum of human knowledge, and every fact 


* [See a little book, published by the Pres. Board of 
Publication, entitled “The Causes and Cure of Scep- 
ticism.”] EpITor. 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES, 297 


that enters into the world’s history. Infi- 
delity, I feel sure, is more in the heart than 
in the head; the affections, not the faculties, 
cradle it; sin, not reason, nurses it. And if 
it thus nestles in the heart, thence man can- 
not remove it. If it existed in the head only, 
Tteason might be able to overcome it; but if 
it be intertwined with the heart, God’s Holy 
Spirit can alone change the heart, and expel 
its unbelief. I once met with an acute and 
enlightened infidel, with whom I reasoned 
day after day, and for hours together. I sub- 
mitted to him the internal, the external, and 
the experimental evidences, but made no 
impression on his scorn and unbelief. At 
length I entertained a Suspicion that there 
was something morally, rather than intellec- 
tually wrong, and that the bias was not in 
the intellect, but in the heart. One day there- 
fore I said to him—«I must now state my 
conviction, and you may call me uncharita- 
ble, but duty compels me ; you are living in 
some known and gross sin.”? The man’s 
countenance became pale; he bowed and 
left me, and I never again met with him to 
discuss the evidences of Christianity. I after- 
wards learned that what I suspected was the 
fact; the man could not embrace sin and the 


298 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD ? 


Gospel simultaneously, and was therefore 
trying to crush the Gospel, because he wished 
to keep his sin. 

I may mention another instance of an indi- 
vidual, whose name is very notorious, and 
who has been long propagating infidelity 
among the lower ranks with fearful success. 
This miserable man had an only daughter 
lying upon a sick-bed. His wife, I may 
observe, who had died, was in her life-time a 
devoted, spiritual-minded, and praying Chris- 
tian. When the daughter’s death was very 
near, and all hope of restoration was utterly 
dissipated, she called her father to her bed- 
side, and said—* My mother died a Chris- 
tian some years ago, rejoicing in Jesus, and 
assured of heaven; yow are a disbeliever in 
Christianity. I am going to make the last 
venture; am I to die in my mother’s faith, 
or'in yours?” “I beseech you to advise 
me,” she said with earnestness and fervour, 
“whether I am to die in my mother’s faith, 
or in yours.” The father’s struggle between 
affection to his only child and the pride of 
devotedness to his principles was tremen- 
dous; but at last, amid a burst of tears and 
in an agony of feeling, the hardened, yet 
melting infidel said, « Die in your mother’s 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 299 


faith.’ And she did die in her mother’s 
faith. And yet the man, who gave that 
advice, lives to propagate infidelity in the 
world, and labours with all the energy he has 
to make men as contaminated as himself. 
But were the mysteries contained in the 
Bible darker, and the difficulties greater than 
they are, we are not to wait till all are re- 
moved before we embrace the gospel. It is 
increase of intellectual light that reveals be- 
yond it increase of intellectual darkness; 
mysteries multiply with discoveries. The 
astronomer does not reject what he knows 
because there is much beyond he cannot see. 
He looks upward on a star-lit evening, and 
views with wonder those countless altar-fires 
that burn incense in perpetual silence. He 
borrows the aid of the telescope, and while 
it Increases the range and clearness of his 
vision, it discloses greater and more impene- 
trable clusters of worlds beyond. Dim and 
distant spots of light are seen to be solar sys- 
tems, revolving around a central sun, and 
that central sun with his revolving systems 
but another cluster rolling around another 
central sun ;—and this is but a faint view of 
the thin suburbs of the heavenly Jerusalem, 
—a dim sight of the mere sentinels and out- 


300 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


posts of that innumerable host spread and 
srouped in the fields of immensity. Let us 
embrace the gospel heartily—the known,— 
and wait patiently for the unknown; let us 
not lose saving truth in prying into hidden 
mysteries; let us not spend time in inquisi- 
tive speculations, and peril eternity by reject- 
ing or neglecting great vital doctrines. 

Thousands feel and witness there is re- 
vealed more than enough to save them. 
Christianity has done for them what nothing 
else could do; it has regained Paradise for 
them, and fitted them for Paradise; it has 
spread over them the peace of God; it has 
erected in their conscience the sceptre of 
righteousness and the standard of truth. 

Nothing can bring a soul zo God but a 
religion that came from God. A lie never 
regenerated a soul or sanctified a heart. The 
greatest mystery in the Bible carries in ita 
saving truth Accept the mystery, not as sav- 
ing you, but as containing the truth that 
saves you,—not as the healing and restorative 
wine, but as the cup that contains it. Try 
not to separate. You cannot throw away 
the mystery without throwing away the truth 
it. contains, 


TEXTS CAVILLED AT. 301 


CHAPTER XI, 


TEXTS CAVILLED AT. 


GENESIS vi. 6, “It repented the Lord that he 
had made man.’?—God the unchangeable 
cannot repent,—that is, alter his mind, from 
the occurrence of unforeseen events. This 
language must be figurative, and meant for 
our capacity, because the same book declares, 
“God is not the son of man that he should 
repent.”? God takes his stand within the 
limits of humanity, and makes use, not only 
of its language, but of its feelings also. 
Thus he asks, “ How shall I give thee up, 
Ephraim ? how shall I deliver thee, Israel ? 
mine heart is turned within me ; my repent- 
ings are kindled together.’’? ‘These are the 
adaptations of heavenly things to human 
capacities, — great truths darkened by the 
medium through which they must pass, in 
order to suit our weak sight. These, too, 
were perhaps rough drafts of the incarnation, 
—anthropomorphic appearances of Deity,— 
to prepare men’s minds for God manifest in 
26 


302 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


the flesh. The complex ritual of the Jews 
too,—its minute prescriptions about the kill- 
ing and offering of animals,—have been 
objected to as unworthy of God. Is it not 
the fact, that in a tree, a flower, a pebble, 
there are innumerable minute fibres, grains, 
or crystals, which seem to us to have been 
uncalled for? In insects, fishes, and birds, is 
there not what seems needless variety, divi- 
sion, and subdivision? In short, is there 
not evidence of the same presence in the 
works of creation and in the laws of Levi? 
Are not acts of parliament, decisions of 
judges, definitions of crime, excessively and 
wearisomely minute? But all these Leviti- 
cal laws were partly.to serve as a perpetual 
hedge to preserve the Jews from the univer- 
sal, contiguous, and imminent idolatry, and 
to prefigure Him for whose advent they were 
taught to wait and pray. Their burden- 
someness was perhaps appointed of God to 
lead the Jews to long for a deliverer. 

Ps. cxl. 10; Ps. cxxix. 6; Ps. cxli. 12; 
Ps. lviii.; Ps. lix.—These are instances of 
what are called imprecations in Scripture. | 
might show that some of these expressions 
might be rendered with equal correctness 
predictions of what shall be. But I take the 


TEXTS CAVILLED AT. 303 


severest sense, and in this light I hesitate not 
to say they are right. David wrote these, 
not as a private man venting his personal 
feelings, but as a judge pronouncing what 
God had authorized. Their crimes justly 
deserved these penalties, and David, as the 
mouthpiece of God, faithfully pronounced 
them. We find the heathen writers fre- 
quently imprecating vengeance on public in- 
famy, and those very persons who object to 
those judgments in the word of God—so 
easily vindicated—are not the last to invoke 
judgments on the heads of those against 
whom they have private animosity. 

Jer. xvii. 9, “ The heart is deceitful above 
all things and desperately wicked: who can 
know it ???——Many have alleged that this is 
an exaggerated and over-coloured charge— 
that we are not such as we are here described 
to be. Now it is very remarkable that hea- 
then writers use language yet stronger in the 
same direction. ‘ As soon as we are born,’’ 
says Cicero, (Tusc. Quest. iii. 2,) “and receive 
the care of our parents, we engage in all 
kinds of depravity, so much that we seem to 
suck in error almost with our nurse’s milk.”’ 
Horace (Sat. i. 3) says, “ No one is born with- 
out iniquities,’ (Vitiis.) Propertius writes, 


304 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 


ll, 22, “ Nature has given man his wicked- 
ness.” Our own experience is perhaps the 
best commentary on the words of Jeremiah; 
Christians admit it—feel it. If it be said it is 
the example of others, not a taint in the 
nature, whence I ask, came that example ? 
A was corrupted by the example of B, and 
B by C, but whose example corrupted the 
first of the series, whose only example was 
himself ? 

Matt. vii. 13, 14, “ Wide is the gate and 
broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, 
and many there be that go in thereat: be- 
cause strait is the gate and narrow is the 
way which leadeth unto life, and few there 
be that find it.”’—-This has been thought an 
over severe estimate, but its accuracy is mat- 
ter of fact and is confirmed by heathen 
observers. Horace (Sat. i. 4) writes,— 


» “Take me a man at venture from the crowd, 
And he’s ambitious, covetous, or proud.” 


Juvenal (Sat. xiii. 26),— 


“Rare are the good, more scarce their number seems 
Than Thebes’ famed gates or Niles’ disparted streams; 
Worse than the iron is the present race; 

Nature with our corruptions keeps no pace; 
Her plastic skill can no vile metal frame 
That’s base enough to give the age a name.” 


TEXTS CAVILLED AT. 805 


Homer (Odyssey ii. 276)—* Few sons are like 
the father, the majority are worse, few are 
better.”’ These, the testimonies of observ- 
ant nature, proclaim the truth of the picture 
sketched in revelation. We know the word 
of God contains no exaggerations, but it may 
silence the caviller if we show that the expe- 
rience of mankind undesignedly confirms the 
testimonies of the word of God. 

John v. 40, “ Ye will not come to me that 
ye may have life;”? Ezek. xviii. 31, « Why 
will ye die ?””?—-Why, it has been asked, does 
God not do what He seems in these and 
similar texts so desirous of doing? Is He 
not omnipotent? Can He not save all, with- 
out exception? God does not extinguish 
human nature, in order to destroy its sinful- 
ness, Were He, in the exercise of omnipo- 
tent power, to save mankind, or drag them 
to heaven against their wills, and in spite of 
their protests and preferences, He would 
treat men as dead machines, or as irrational 
and irresponsible creatures. God reverences, 
if we may so speak, the noblest workmau- 
ship of His hands. He will not drive by 
force. He draws with cords of love, and 
with bands ofa man. “ Behold, I stand at 


the door and knock; if any man will open, I 
26° 


806 ‘IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


will come in and sup with him and he with 
me.’’? Rather than do violence to the free- 
dom and responsibility of man, he will wait 
outside a suppliant for admission. He will 
conciliate where he might coerce and com- 
mand. But if the God of grace is blamed 
for not accomplishing by force what He de- 
sires to do by motives, hopes, and menaced 
penalties, may not the God of providence be - 
equally complained of p—Why has He erect- 
ed in man’s bosom a beseeching, alarming, 
threatening, and promising power called con- 
science, leaving those that disregard it to 
suffer, and giving to those that listen to it 
peace, instead of directly compelling men to 
be holy and therefore happy? If God’s 
unsuccessful appeals to man through the 
medium of revelation disprove either the 
benevolence or power of the God of Chris- 
tianity, then God’s unsuccessful appeals 
through the medium of conscience must 
disprove the benevolence or power of the 
God of nature and providence. Grace and 
Providence are streams from the same foun- 
tain. There is no objection to the one that 
does not lie against the other also. The 
rejecter of the former must, to be consistent, 
reject the latter also, and thus plunge into 


TEXTS CAVILLED AT. | OF 


the most revolting of all inconsistencies, 
atheism. itself. . 

Matt. v. 28, “Whosoever looketh on a 
woman to lust after her hath committed 
adultery with her already in his heart.’?— 
This has been pronounced severe morality ; 
yet there are testimonies from the writings 
of the highest heathen moralists that show 
that man, in his best moments, feels it to be 
just and true. 

Seneca writes: “The vestal virgin, who 
desires to commit fornication, is guilty, even 
though she commit it not.’? Cicero writes: 
« A good man will not only not dare to do, 
but he will not even dare to think, what he 
cannot speak of in public.’?/ Juvenal writes: 


“ Thus but intended mischief stayed in time, 
Has all the moral guilt of finished crime.” 


These, and kindred sentiments in heathen 
writers, are fragments of our aboriginal 
purity in Paradise, and show that the con- 
science of humanity, even its wreck, emits 
- at times attestations to the truth of God’s 
word. 

Matt. x. 34,—« Think not that Iam come 
to send peace on earth: I came not to send 
peace, but a sword.”’ Startling expressions 


308 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


like this prove rather the reality and truth 
of Scripture. Impostors, desirous of popu- 
larity and progress, would not have hazarded 
statements so likely to injure a present popu- 
larity, the only object of their efforts. Does 
it however contradict those passages that 
announce the Saviour as the Prince of 
Peace ?—that declare one of the essential 
elements of his kingdom to be peace? We 
answer, No. The Gospel may be the occa- 
sion of war, but in itself it is the eause of 
peace. Its holiness coming into collision with 
men’s sins—its denunciations of iniquity fall- 
ing on those that love it—its rebuke of the 
most plausible hypocrisy, and its recognition 
of the least heartfelt desire “to do justly and 
love mercy’’—its enshrining the least seed of 
truth, and its indifference to the largest husk 
of ceremony, are calculated as soon as intro- 
duced into a fallen world, to rouse the resist- 
ance of wicked men. But such resistance is 
not the fruit of Christianity, but of corrupt 
human nature, hating and seeking to repel 
the approach of truth. Does not every 
attempt to enfranchise the enslaved, to vindi- 
cate the oppressed, create around it and in 
its train the same opposition? Have not 
the greatest benefactors of the world been 


TEXTS CAVILLED AT. 309 


obliged, as they dared, to despise the oppo- 
sition because they loved the happiness of 
mankind? The world’s scorn was aroused 
by their lofty contrast to the world’s selfish- 
ness; and that scorn was an augury of their 
future success. 

Prejudices that have struck their roots into 
the heart of nations, and twined their fibres 
around the habits and associations of men, 
are not easily or gently uprooted. What are 
all the collisions of society but the results of 
evil rising to put down righteousness, and of 
righteousness rising to put down oppression 
and injustice? Were the introduction of the 
Gospel followed by no opposition, there 
would be wanting one of the highest indica- 
tions of its heavenly origin. While it is true 
that the “world lieth in wickedness,” and 
“the carnal heart is enmity to God,’ so long 
the truth will not want a shadow, nor holi- 
ness an opponent. 

Luke xiv. 26,—“If any man come to me, 
and hate not his father and mother, and wife, 
and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, 
and his own life also, he cannot be my dis- 
ciple?” This has been quoted as a specimen 
of a severe and cynic morality. It is plain 
that Scripture invariably enjoins love from 


310 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


man to man, and still more love from child 
to parent. This runs through all revelation ; 
of this there can be no reasonable doubt. It 
is therefore the right way to interpret the 
solitary, seemingly contradictory text, by the 
many plain and obvious ones. The word 
‘hate’? is used in Scripture comparatively 
with love. Thus it is stated, in Gen. xxix. 
31,—“ When the Lord saw that Leah was 
hated ;’’ but this is explained in the preceding 
verse, (verse 30, ) “he loved Rachel more 
than Leah ;’’—*hated,’’ in verse 31, is the 
“less loved ”’ in verse 30. So, “If any man 
hate not his father,’ &c., must mean, “ If any 
man love his father above me, serve, or sacri- 
fice, or suffer for an earthly relationship more 
than for me.” 

In the Gospel of Matthew, however, we 
have the parallel passage, and the meaning 
of this thereby fixed, (Matt. x. 37;) “He 
that loveth father or mother more than me is 
not worthy of me.’’ It is not uncommon to 
find a relative obligation couched in absolute 
terms; thus: “Set your affections on things 
above, not on things on the earth ;’? that is— 
love things on earth in subordination to things 
in heaven. | 

Such phraseology, however, is not pecu- 


DOCTRINAL DIFFICULTIES. 311 


liar to the Bible; it occurs in heathen wri- 
Lers 

Cicero De Officiis iii. 5: “To despise plea- 
sures, riches, and even life itself, and to 
regard them as nothing when they come to 
be compared with the public interest, is the 
duty of a brave and heroic spirit.” 

Tyrteeus, Ode iv. 13—18, “Let us fight 
with spirit for our country and our children, 
no longer sparing our souls;” lil. 3, “ count- 
ing his soul as odious, but death dear as the 
sun.” 

Thus the language of the sacred penman 
is not without precedent, and therefore any 
opposition to it, because of its form, cannot 
stop there. 

James ii. 10, “He that offendeth in one 
point is guilty of all.”—This has been asserted 
as hyper-rigid morality; yet it is not really 
so. If a man steal, he is laid hold on by the 
law of the land, and punished as guilty. The 
law does not connive at his conduct till he 
has murdered, and forged, and libelled. It 
regards one crime as a violation of it, and 
holds the criminal guilty. To be guilty of 
murder, it is not required that the crime be 
committed in all the forms in which it is pos- 
sible to do so: the extinction of the life of 


312 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 


another in revenge, or for plunder, is equally 
murder. The apostle explains the reason 
when he adds, “for He that said, Do not 
commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now, 
if thou commit no adultery, yet, if thou kill, 
thou art become a transgressor of the law.’ 

Rom. v. 9, “Justified by Christ.” 

Rom. v. 1, “ Justified by faith.’ 

James ii. 24, “ By works a man is justi- 
fied.”” These seem contradictory each to the 
other; but they are not so. We are justified 
by Christ meritoriously ; by faith, instru- 
mentally ; by works, declaratively. Christ’s 
righteousness is the ground and title of our 
admission to the hopes and certainty of hap- 
piness. Faith is the instrument, or hand, 
by which we lay hold on that title, as the 
hand of a drowning man grasps the rope 
flung out to him. A holy life is the visible 
evidence of that state of acceptance which 
invariably gives birth to all the fruits of the 
Spirit. 

Gen. ii. 2, “And on the seventh day God 
ended his work, and he rested on the seventh 
day from all his work which he had made.” 

John v. 17, “My Father worketh hitherto, 
and I work,’’ 

There is no contradiction between these 


TEXTS CAVILLED AT, , 313 


texts. The one refers to creation, and the 
other to providence. The former describes 
God’s completion of the successive strata and 
races consummated by man; the latter de- 
notes God’s preserving, regulating, and main- 
taining, all things animate and inanimate. 

Acts vii. 48, “The Most High dwelleth 
not in temples made with hands,” 

Exod. xxv. 8, “ Let them make me a sanc- 
tuary, that I may dwell among them.’ 

The former text describes the majesty of 
God, the latter his grace. The one is his 
absolute dwelling, “light, inaccessible, and 
full of glory ;’’ the other is his special and 
gracious presence, “ wheresoever two or three 
are met together in my name, there am I in 
the midst of them.’’ 

Ieph. v. 29, « No man ever yet hated his 
own flesh.”” Matt. v. 29, “If thy right eye 
offend thee, pluck it out.”,—-The first text is 
literally true; it is human nature, and every 
man’s experience responds to it: the second 
is obviously figurative, and denotes that sins 
as dear from preference, and as near from as- 
sociation, as a right eye, must be renounced 
and put away at any sacrifice or pain. 

Luke i. 33, “ Of his kingdem there shall be 
no end.” 1 Cor. xv. 24, “Then cometh the 

27 


314 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


end when he shall have delivered up the 
kingdom to God.”—The first text refers to 
that kingdom which is righteousness and 
peace and joy; of this there shall be no end. 
The second text relates to the mode of ad- 
ministering his kingdom, which mode will 
cease when all the objects of his love have 
been gathered into the region of the full en- 
joyment of it. 

I give these as specimens merely of what 
are denounced as contradictions. All the 
seeming contradictions of Scripture can be 
easily and satisfactorily explained. The har- 
mony that really exists under the discrepancy 
that appears, is only additional proof of the 
reality and truthfulness of the Scriptures. 
When Moses saw an Egyptian fighting with 
an Israelite and trying to destroy him, he 
slew the Egyptian and let the Israelite go. 
When he saw an Israelite fighting with an 
Israelite, he separated them and made them 


friends. Even so, when we see an error. 


assaulting or overlaying a truth, let us destroy 
the error and emancipate the truth; but when 
we see a truth seemingly in conflict witha 
truth, let us reconcile them, and show them 
thus reconciled to all. | 


a Se 


CONCLUSION. 315 


CHAPTER XII. 
CONCLUSION. 


« For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory 
of man as the flower of the grass. The 
grass withereth, and the flower thereof fadeth 
away, but the word of the Lord endureth for 
ever. And this is the word which by the 
Gospel is preached unto you.’’ These, the 
words of Peter, are not the original. They 
are only the echo. Isaiah had uttered them 
before him. ‘The first half of the sentence is 
the untiring chant of nature, the last the un- 
changing voice of God. The peasant looks 
on his fields, and the pent up citizen on his 
sickly plant in his flower-pot, and both feel, 
« the grass withereth, and the flower thereof 
fadeth away.’’ On the other hand, the hum- 
blest believer on earth and the highest saint 
beside God’s throne, alike proclaim, ‘the 
word of God endureth for ever.” The wind 
that sighs as it sweeps through the trees of 
the forest in fitful and freezing gusts—the 
showers of dead leaves that fall at their roots 


$16 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


—and the naked skeleton branches that shiver 
in the blast, are the solemn and pathetic trum- 
pets that convey to the listening ear the dirge 
of things seen. 

David gave utterance to this truth in his 
days, “ As for man, his days are as grass, as 
a flower of the field so he flourisheth, for the 
wind passeth over it and it is gone, and the 
place thereof shall know it no more.” Nearly 
three hundred years after David, Isaiah pro- 
claimed the same analogy, “All flesh is grass, 
and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower 
of the field—the grass withereth, the flower 
fadeth :’? and seven hundred years subse- 
quent to Isaiah, Peter records the same sen- 
timent in nearly the same words. The out- 
ward laws and movements of nature thus 
continue from the beginning. The same sun 
that shone on Abel and Noah and Abraham 
shines on us. These same stars that sparkle 
over our houses, looked upon the fall and the 
flood, on Marathon and Thermopyle, Water- 
loo, Nineveh, Constantinople and London, 
on Noah and Napoleon. The grass grew 
and withered under the footsteps of Jacob as 
under ours; “ All things continue as they 
were from the beginning of the creation.’ 
But this, instead of being ground of atheistic 


CONCLUSION. 317 


presumption, is really evidence of the un- 
changeableness of God. 

One lesson taught us in these words is the 
truth and reality of a brotherhood between 
us and flowers and trees, between the green 
things that wither, and the bright and beauti- 
ful ones that die. The dead violet is the fra- 
grant memorial of the infant that drooped 
and died. The still unscattered dust of the 
flower that fades in June brings to our re- 
membrance the fair form that was suddenly 
breathed on by some mysterious emissary, 
and passed away inher noon. Another falls 
from the tree of life like that sere leaf. In 
the woods in winter we cannot be long 
alone ; visions and associations will gather 
around us—departed forms and almost for- 
gotten faces will rise like thin shadows from 
the grave, and almost forgotten faces will 
come forth from the past and bear witness to 
the words which, like monumental inscrip- 
tions on the pavement, the feet of traffic are 
continually defacing, but which the sweep of 
years renders again clear and legible. « All 
flesh is as grass; the grass withereth, and 
the flower fadeth.” 

Mortality is the universal attribute. Man 
has his autumn as well as buds or flowers, 

aay 


818 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GoD? 


and the same casualties too; a frost nips the 
flowers—a worm gnaws the root of the grass, 
or a blight falls on it from the air, and it 
withers. The great majority of the human 
family perishes in the mid-time of its days, 
and though some sheltered plant may retain 
its beauty and its fragrance amid the wreck of 
its faded sisterhood, it also must droop and 
die. God has written it, and no prescriptions 
or balms or care can reverse it, « All flesh is 
as grass; the grass withereth ; ”’ and lest it 
should be supposed that aristocracy and 
wealth and beauty may possibly be ex- 
empted from the common lot, it is added, 
“ And the flower,” that is, the chief portions 
of humanity, “ fadeth.” 

But the universal fact of death is not the 
only lesson taught by the withering grass. 
It seems to teach us how to die. The pro- 
ductions of nature die as if they felt full con- 
fidence in Him that made and summons them. 
The leaf drops gently from the tree with- 
out a murmur—the flower welcomes the 
death-frost as a messenger from its Maker, 
bows its head upon its stalk, and yields its 
richest perfume as it dies. From the heath- 
vell on the common to the oak in the forest, 
all die softly; God says to each, “Return,” 


CONCLUSION. 319 


and they answer in music, “ We return.” 
Why should not Christians equally trust! 
Why should not they yield themselves as gen- 
tly and willingly to God! Does God care 
for flowers and grass? “Are not we much 
better than they ?” 

Nature also, as she dies, looks most beau- 
tiful. The trees in autumn seem to put on their 
coronation robes. Their leaves assume their 
most gorgeous tints; and when all these leaves 
fall in the forest, it is only to remove the inter- 
cepting screen, and let the sunbeam and star- 
light shine with unobstructed effulgence, 
May not our sun be fairest at setting ! May 
not we, like flowers and trees, go down to the 
grave in joy? May not we, like Simeon, de- 
part in peace? Should not our death be an 
euthanasia! Death is but the removal of the 
broad shadow of mortality, the emancipation 
of the spirit,—the porch of life,—the vesti- 
bule of glory. These reflections, however, all 
assume that this life is not our all. Were there 
no destiny beyond it, within the reach of all 
that will, man’s lot would be worse a thou- 
sand fold than that of the dumb universe 
around him; and if there be a life beyond 
this, the nature of which is contingent on 
what we become in the present, how great is 


320 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


the folly of that man who fits himself for 
every office upon earth, but takes no thought 
and makes no preparation for eternity; who 
Strives to be everything except a Christian ; 
who cares much about many things, but 
nothing about his soul! 

All that man admires and pursues on earth, 
nevertheless, must perish as the grass, and as 
the flower of the grass. Is it personal beauty 
we glory in? It has all the prominence, 
but all the evanescence also, of “the flower 
of the grass.”” Like the bloom ona plum or 
peach, touch it, and it is gone! Is it intel- 
lectual wisdom? Is not the wisdom of yes- 
terday the folly of to-day? Have not 
theories once deemed perfect, canonized by 
infallible Popes and sung by great poets, 
been afterwards dismissed as puerile, or re- 
jected as untrue? If future centuries are 
yet to follow that which is already half-spent, 
they may look back on our railroads, and 
steamers, and electric telegraphs, and laws, 
and literature, and pity or smile amid their 
brilliant discoveries, and repeat then as we 
do now, “The grass withereth and the 
flower fadeth.” 

Is it the productions of genius that we 
cherish! Where are the wonders of our 


CONCLUSION, 321 


Athenian pencil? Where are the all but 
livinz creations of the Corinthian chisel ? 
Where are the gates of Thebes—the temple 
of Diana—the columns of the Parthenon, the 
Pantheon? 

Is it wealth in which we trust? Of all 
earthly possessions it is the most precarious. 
In all its shapes, and formulas, and repre- 
sentatives, it perishes. It melts in our hands; 
We spend it most profusely in youth, when it 
would be most desirable to save it, and we 
hoard it most penuriously in old age, just 
when we must be taken from it. It is liable 
to take wings and flee away. Kingdoms, 
empires, colleges, fortunes, daily fade like the 
flower. The crash of one throne mingles 
with the echoes of a former; and the débris 
of one party forms the foundation of another. 
Our ships founder at sea, and rich argosies 
perish; our splendid mansicns and public 
edifices are consumed by the flame that 
revels amid their glory, and leaves behind 
but its black footprints to tell the tidings of its 
havoc, Your fealth withers as the grass, 
and your renown as “the flower of the grass,”’ 

Languages change, ceremonies vary, sacra- 
ments are temporary; Sabbaths exist like 
little ponds, till the ocean of eternity over- 


322 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


flows them; prayer continues only while 
there are wants, and a ministry while there 
is ignorance; but around this dissolving 
world one thing abides—the word of the 
Lord endureth for ever. 

Aggressions have only served to vindicate 
its truth, and reveal its lustre. The theories 
of former geologists have withered like the 
grass, Genesis endureth for ever. The gar- 
nets of Falhun, the crystals of the Alps, 
emeralds from Brazil, spars from Derbyshire, 
and rubies from Ceylon, all cast illustrative 
light on the word of the Lord. 

The theories of speculative minds, the 
badges of sects, the shibboleths of parties, 
the opinions of schoolmen, and the decrees 
of synods, have withered like the grass; but 
“the word of the Lord endureth for ever ;”’ 
and “this is the word which by the gospel 
is preached unto you.’ What? Let us 
read, “The soul that sins shall die;” “the 
wages of sin is death.’’ These propositions 
are as true to-day as they were five thousand 
years ago. Sin and suffering are cause and 
effect. Penalty follows crime here and here- 
after; God says so. It is in vain that any 
attempt, practically or speculatively, to dis- 
prove the connexion. The last fire shall not 


CONCLUSION. 323 


dissolve or exhaust it. Let us not shut our 
eyes to it, and. try to reason ourselves into a 
disbelief of its reality. 

2. «All have sinned;” “there is none 
righteous, no, not one;””? “God hath con- 
cluded (shut up) all under sin.””? This also 
endureth for ever. They that are saints in 
heaven were once sinners upon earth. All 
now on earth are shut up in this condemna- 
tion; there is no exception; we who read 
these lines are inmates of this great prison. 
We fancy there is no prison because we do 
not see the bars, and chains, and locks, and 
each seems to do as he pleases. But this is 
Satan’s delusion; he wishes you to think 
you are free while you are in chains—that 
you see while you are blind, and are the in- 
mates of a palace though in reality captives 
ina prison. It is of no use to oppose this 
truth ; it is neither the withering grass nor 
the fading flower, but the “ Word of the 
Lord which endureth for ever.’ They alone 
whose eyes have been opened, and who have 
been emancipated by the Spirit of God, now 
see that the iron had entered into their souls, 
and that the sophisms of Satan, and the sug- 
gestions of flesh and blood were but the in- 


3824 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


toxicating drugs that stupefied their sense of 
the reality of their state. 

3, «Christ died for our sins.” < This is a 
faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, » 
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save 
sinners.” “God hath made Him who knew 
no sin to be sin for us, that we might be 
made the righteousness of God.’ “ God so 
loved the world, that He gave His only-be- 
gotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him 
might not perish, but have eternal life.”’ 

This is the word we preach, neither spent 
in its descent from heaven, nor wasted in its 
transmission through ages; fresh, and beau- 
tiful, and holy as at first; repeated every 
Sabbath, read in every Bible—the eloquence 
of many thousand pulpits, and the music of 
many tongues. It is heaven’s jubilee, sound- 
ing in the cells of the great prison ; it is the 
light of eternal day, shining through its grat- 
ings; Christ crucified is the commencement, 
the core, and the coronal of Christianity, 
The Gospel is not a mere directory, or 4 lof- 
tier law than Sinai’s, but a medicine, a sys- 
tem of restoration; and the great and only 
medium of that restoration is the vicarious 
death and atoning sacrifice of the Son of God. 


CONCLUSION. 325 


This truth endureth for ever; it is enshrined 
in glory. The Lamb is seen amid the splen- 
dour of the throne; “God manifest in the 
flesh,’’ is the peculiarity, the glory, the sub- 
stance of the Gospel. 

“This is life eternal, to know thee the 
only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou 
hast sent.”? Other knowledge may be orna- 
mental, but this is essential—vital. All other 
wisdom may wither as the grass, but this 
endureth for ever. All else may be “meat 
or drink,’ or form, or ceremony; but this 
is “righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy 
Ghost.’’ 

4. “Except a man be born again, he can- 
not see the kingdom of heaven.” This, too, 
is an eternal truth—an irreversible decision. 
It admits of no exception; no privileges 
exempt from it; kings and subjects must 
equally undergo it before they can enter the 
kingdom of heaven. Nor is this a super- 
ficial or mere extrinsic change; it is not the 
surrender of one theory at the bidding of an- 
other ; nor is it the expulsion from the mind 
of one system of opinions to make way for 
the introduction of another; it is not becom- 
ing a Calvinist, or an Arminian, or an Epis- 
copalian, or a Presbyterian. It is being 

28 


326 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


made a new creature, an anointed Chris- 
tian—“ turned from darkness to light, and 
from the power of Satan to God.” It is “a 
new heart;’’ it is life within and light with- 
out. The experience of this change is the 
highest evidence in the subject of it, that 
Christianity is from God. He sees and feels, 
and therefore believes. He has seen enough 
—a Saviour’s blood, and a Saviour’s cross. 
He sees heaven prepared for him, and feels 
his heart prepared for it. A lie cannot do 
this; a falsehood has no power to create a 
moral revolution. He has a new object of 
worship; no longer vain-glory, riches, self; 
but God; and this not the absolute God, but 
God in Christ a Father; a new object of pur- 
suit; not what to eat and drink; not the 
care of self, or the concerns of earth, but the 
glory of God: whether “he eats or drinks, or 
whatsoever he does, he does all to the glory 
of God.’’ | 

5. “Come unto me, all ye that are weary 
and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’’ 
“Took unto me, all ends of the earth, and be 
ye saved.” “Come, let us reason together ; 
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be 
white as snow, though they be red like crim- 
son, they shall be as wool.’? “The Spirit 


CONCLUSION. 327 


and the bride say, Come, and let him that is 
athirst come, and take of the water of life 
freely.” 

Such is the free and unrestricted invitation 
of God to all the purchased and promised 
blessings of the gospel. There is not a re- 
sponsible creature on the frozen ledges of 
Greenland, or on the scorched and burning 
sands of Sierra Leone, to whom we are not 
commissioned to address these words. The 
great complaint of the waiting Saviour is not 
that too many or too great sinners come to 
Him. It is, “ Ye will not come to me that 
ye may have life.” No one need wait for 
what will not be,—greater worthiness before 
he close with the offers of the Saviour—nor 
need any wait for deeper conviction of sin; 
for it is not the degree, but the fact of convic- 
tion Christ meets and ministers to. The 
everlasting arms are now outstretched. God’s 
mercy will never be ampler—nor the blood 
of Jesus more efficacious—nor the gates of 
heaven wider—nor the way of life smoother. 
Our responsibilities deepen and multiply 
every day. The hour of mercy is not a fix- 
ture and long as a thousand years, but per- 
petually on the wing. Each of us has his 
day. How dreadful must be the retrospect 


328 IS CHRISTIANITY FRom GoD? 


from a judgment seat, with nothing but tram- 
pled privileges for it to fix on !—how terrible 
to remember that from the cradle to the grave 
the voice of mercy was addressed to us in 
vain !—how overwhelming to hear the “ De- 
part ye,” that we must obey, uttered by the 
same lips which so often cried, “Come ye,” 
and which we would not obey ! 

How deep a hell must their prison be, who 
scorned the beseeching voice and the atoning 
blood of the Son of God! 

Our sun is not yet set, nor our privileges 
perished. The word of the Lord endures, 
and we hear it: how long we shall be spared 
to hear it, God only knows, for we know not 
what a day may bring forth. Whatever 
opposes this word must perish, whatever 
contends against it must be crushed. Infi- 
delity—the word of man—however musical 
its utterances, will be hushed—its airy frost- 
work, however glittering in the sunbeams, 
will be dissolved. It is a system of nega- 
tions—it has no nutriment for man’s soul. It 
has the withering without the reality of the 
erass. The Bible it will yet see is not a 
fiction —nor real religion fanaticism — nor 
anxiety about the soul madness—nor adher- 
ence to vital truth bigotry. Superstition, too, 


CONCLUSION. 329 


in all its shapes will be dissipated. It comes 
from beneath, and it returns again to its level. 
No patronage can prevent it, no persecution 
shield it; but God’s word will endure for 
ever. This gospel is divine in its birth, and 
eternal in its destiny. Christianity enunci- 
ates truths that are above the tide-mark of 
time, and rooted in the attributes of God. It 
cannot be extinguished, for God is its might 
—it cannot die, for God is its life. Perfect 
holiness is of itself perpetuity. It is the 
answer to our most anxious inquiries, the solu- 
tion of our greatest perplexities. It appeals 
to what is deepest and dearest in the heart 
of humanity, and therefore every regenerated 
heart is ready to protest against every attempt 
to rob us of jewels of inestimable price. 

Even in this world, humility is triumphing 
over pride, and love over hatred, and gentle- 
ness over wrath, and these alone are auguries 
of what must be. 


“Truth crushed to earth will rise again, 
The eternal years of God are hers: 
But error wounded writhes with pain, 
And dies amid her worshippers,” 


Ancient dynasties may fall, and popular 
governments explode, but Christ “ shall reign 


330 IS CHRISTIANITY FROM GOD? 


over the house of David forever, and of his 
kingdom there shall be no end.” 

Thrones may totter, and powerful sceptres 
be shivered, but “thy throne, O God, is for 
ever and ever.” 

We necd no more fear that the Sun of 
Righteousness will set in clouds, than that the 
burning centre of our system shall fall from 
his socket. Christianity will appear most 
beautiful when marble statues are defaced, and 
monuments of bronze are blended with the 
dust. Eternity itself will attest how perish- 
ing is all that the world calls beautiful or 
great, and how lasting is all which God pro- 
nounces true. 

Christianity is from God! 


THE END. 


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